North Korea has expressed its preparedness for both dialogue and war with Washington, but vows to enlarge its nuclear arsenal to counter what it describes as US “military threats and provocations.”

“The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is fully ready for dialogue and war. It will continue bolstering up its nuclear deterrent as long as the US military threats and provocations go on,” North’s official Korean Central News Agency quoted an unidentified foreign ministry spokesman as saying on Tuesday.

The statement from North Korea’s foreign ministry was the latest in a series of criticism against an annual joint exercise that South Korea and the United States launched Monday.

The ten-day Key Resolve/Foal Eagle drill involves 18,000 US troops and 20,000 South Korean troops. Pyongyang says the war game is a preparation for a nuclear war.

The nuclear-armed state claims the drill amounts to a rehearsal for a preemptive nuclear attack on the country. Pyongyang has said its military is ready to “blow up” any aggressors and has vowed to suspend all military dialogue with Washington and Seoul during the period.

This year’s joint military drill — the largest between South Korea and the United States — comes amid pressures to return Pyongyang back to six-party talks.

The disarmament-for-aid nuclear talks are aimed at ending North Korea’s nuclear program through a negotiating process involving China, the United States, North and South Korea, Japan, and Russia.

In response to a joint South Korea-US military drill, North Korea said Sunday it will no longer make efforts towards nuclear disarmament.

North Korea also threatened to use “merciless physical force” in reaction to the annual military exercises due to kick off on Monday.

Pyongyang also announced that it would no longer abide by the armistice that brought a truce to the Korean War fifty years ago.

“The revolutionary armed forces of (North Korea) will be left with no option but to exercise merciless physical force as the rival is set to do harm to the (North),” the military’s mission at the truce village of Panmunjom said in a statement carried by the country’s official Korean Central News Agency.

The mission said that South Korea violated the armistice by participating in the military cooperation with the United States.

Both South Korea and the US, which keeps about 28,500 troops in the country, insist the maneuvers are purely defensive.

However, on Sunday, Pyongyang condemned the drills as a preparation for an invasion.

The two Koreas are in theory still at war as the Korean War in the 1950s ended with a truce and not a peace treaty.

Romania has confirmed its intention to host three batteries of US interceptor missiles on its soil as part of Washington’s revamped missile system plan for Eastern Europe.

Bucharest in October expressed readiness to take part in the US missile system plan expected to be operational by 2015.

“This is not a secret. There will be three batteries of eight missiles each,” President Traian Basescu said on Friday during a presentation of the Defense Ministry in the country’s capital, AFP reported.

The announcement has angered Russia, which deems the US plan an infringement of its national sovereignty and a direct threat against Moscow.

In an attempt to reassure Russia, Washington and its allies in the region say the missile system is meant to ward off threats from rogue states like ‘North Korea and Iran.’

“This is a defensive system and it cannot be reversed into an offensive one,” Basescu reiterated.

US President Barack Obama decided last year to drop the missile plan drawn up by former President George W. Bush, which envisaged deployment of elements of the missile system in the Czech Republic and Poland.

The new plan stipulates the deployment of medium-range ballistic missile interceptors in Romania while initiating a “phased, adaptive approach” to the plan in Eastern Europe.

North Korea says it will not abandon its nuclear weapons unless the United States ends its hostile policy in the troubled peninsula.

The official Korean Central News Agency said on Friday that Pyongyang will keep its nuclear arsenal unless the US changes its hostile policies.

“Unless (the US) terminates its hostile policy and nuclear threats towards our Republic, our abandonment of nuclear weapons will not happen even if the earth breaks,” the declaration read.

It went on to add that the country will not give up its nuclear program in return for economic aid.

The declaration also emphasized that the country has developed atomic bombs for its own defense and not for economic favors.

This declaration comes after the communist country announced plans to launch live-fire exercises near its sea border with South Korea.

North Korean forces will open fire from four spots on the country’s west coast and from two spots on its east coast.

The drills will take place from Saturday to Monday.

Pyongyang has declared the affected areas as no-sailing zones.

North Korea is under international pressure to return to the six-party talks on its nuclear disarmament.

The US says easing sanctions against North Korea is out of the question until Pyongyang returns to the six-party talks on its nuclear disarmament.

US Assistant Secretary Kurt Campbell rejected the North Korea’s terms for resuming the nuclear disarmament talks.

“Until those steps are taken, the United States will not be prepared either to ease sanctions nor begin discussions on other issues like the establishment of a peace regime,” Campbell said in South Korean on Wednesday.

Campbell told reporters that the North must show willingness to scrap its nuclear program.

Pyongyang wants to discuss a peace treaty with Washington separate from the six-party talks — which brings together China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, North Korea and the United States.

However, Campbell said that “the essential next step is really the six-party talks, not discussions on another matters.”

Seoul said Wednesday North Korea fired artillery near a disputed sea border off the west coast of the peninsula, prompting South Korean forces to return fire.

South Korean state media Yonhap news agency quoted a member of the Joint Chief of Staffs as saying that several artillery shells were fired off waters near the inter-Korean maritime border around 9:05 am (0000 GMT).

“We have confirmed North Korea’s firing of several artillery shells, but they did not cross the (Northern Limit Line),” Park Sung-woo said. “We are on high military alert.”

No injuries were reported following the incident, which was the second time the rivals have clashed in the past three months.

On Tuesday, North Korea declared a “no-sail zone” in the disputed area of the Yellow Sea off its coast.

The two sides last exchanged gunfire in the disputed area in November, the first such violent incident in seven years.

The US has urged North Korea not to test any more missiles ahead of possible talks over the country’s nuclear program, US envoy Stephen Bosworth says.

“I urged them not to do any more of that sort of thing,” Bosworth said on Wednesday when asked whether there was the potential for a third nuclear weapons test by Pyongyang.

North Korea conducted its second plutonium-based nuclear test in May in defiance of calls by the international community.

The US special envoy, who visited North Korea last week for talks with the Pyongyang officials, told reporters that the North agreed that its uranium enrichment work would be part of any resumed nuclear talks.

“They agreed that the subject of a uranium enrichment program is now on the agenda when we resume talks,” Bosworth said.

He added that Washington is consulting with its partners China, South Korea, Russia and Japan about reviving the six-party talks.

A Thai team is scrutinizing some 30 tons of North Korean weapons which were shipped into the country labeled as drilling equipment.

The 100-plus group of law enforcement agents and weapons experts on Tuesday trawled through the weapons which entered Bangkok four days ago on board a plane from North Korea, Reuters reported.

The head of international affairs at the Office of the Attorney-General, Sirisak Tiyapan said the weapons included “rocket launchers, rocket-propelled grenades and components for surface-to-air-missiles.”

Thailand impounded the plane after a reported tip-off from the US on the aircraft’s cargo.

“Experts will inspect further. That could provide clues in terms of who might want this sort of weapons, where they might be going, and where they were produced,” Tiyapan added.

The aircraft’s five-member crew, four Kazaks and one Belarusian, are currently in detention on charges of illegal possession of heavy weapons. The detention period could be extended up to 84 days and the crew could each be handed a 10-year jail term if found guilty.

The detainees claim the arms were destined for Sri Lanka and the Middle East.

A UN Security Council ban, evoked as a result of North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests, prevents Pyongyang from selling weapons.

The United Nations atomic watchdog has convened for a two-day meeting to discuss the Iranian nuclear program.

According to AFP, the 35-member board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) began two days of deliberations covering various topics, including Iran, North Korea, Syria and a Russian proposal for a fuel bank.

It will be the last meeting under the leadership of Egyptian diplomat Mohamed ElBaradei, who will step down as the IAEA Director General on November 30, after 12 years in office.

The meeting comes after ElBaradei rejected a proposal by the Iranian government to exchange low-enriched uranium (LEU) in a simultaneous swap on Iranian territory.

Speaking at the opening of the two-day meeting, ElBaradei said he was “disappointed” by Iran’s refusal to accept the IAEA-proposed deal, which envisages Iran shipping out most of its low-enriched uranium (LEU) to be further enriched and returned to the country for the Tehran medical research reactor.

“I am disappointed that Iran has not so far agreed to the original proposal or the alternative modalities, both of which I believe are balanced and fair and would greatly help to alleviate the concerns relating to Iran’s nuclear program,” he told the IAEA governing board.

The Iranian officials have firmly rejected the idea, mainly because there are no concrete guarantees that the country would in fact receive the nuclear fuel it requires.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki has announced that Iran’s enriched uranium supply will not be sent abroad to be exchanged with the fuel rods needed for the Tehran medical reactor.

He instead said that although Iran would prefer to buy the 20 percent-enriched uranium rather than exchanging it with the LEU, the country would consider the latter option as long as it takes place inside the Iranian territory.

In an official visit to North Korea, the Chinese defense minister has underlined the strong military ties between Beijing and Pyongyang.

“No force on earth can break the unity of the armies and peoples of the two countries and it will last forever,” said Chinese Defense Minister Liang Guanglie on Monday.

The Chinese official arrived in Pyongyang for talks on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency reported.

The visit comes as the two sides mark 60 years of close relations and as international pressure mounts on Pyongyang to return to talks on its nuclear program.

Meanwhile, North Korea’s Defense Minister Kim Yong-Chun said that the Korean army and citizens are interested in developing bilateral ties between the two nations.

The Chinese minister will be on a three-nation tour of North Korea, Japan and Thailand beginning Sunday and ending December 5.

China, which supported North Korea during the 1950-53 Korean War, is the country’s main source of economic aid and diplomatic support.

The US and South Korean Marine Corps have conducted a joint military drill, just as North Korea announced that it has weaponized more plutonium.

2,600 South Korean marines and about 600 US counterparts have participated in a military landing operation, in a shore near the port city of Pohang, about 360 km southeast of Seoul.

18 warships, 36 amphibious tanks and 56 helicopters from both South Korea and the United States were deployed for the operation, CCTV reported on Wednesday.

The two forces said that the exercise was conducted in order to ensure readiness in battle.

The drill comes a day after North Korea announced that it has reprocessed spent fuel rods at its Yongbyon nuclear plant.

Pyongyang says the fuel has been turned into an arms-grade plutonium.

The move follows a Sunday report about a joint US-South Korean plans to intervene in North Korea in case of a ‘regime collapse.’

Pyongyang prompted new worries by abandoning the disarmament talks in 2007, running a second nuclear test in May, and proceeding to restore a nuclear plant. North Korea has persistently complained of new demands imposed on the disarmament talks by the Americans as well as other provocative acts and rhetoric by the US against the country.

UN nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei criticized the United States on Monday for using a false pretext to invade Iraq, costing the lives of possibly hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians.

Former US President George W Bush ordered US troops into Iraq in March 2003 to overthrow dictator Saddam Hussein, citing evidence of the existence of weapons of mass destruction in that country. No such weapons were found after the invasion.

ElBaradei said Iraq and North Korea were two cases of suspected nuclear proliferation in the 1990s. “I will always lament the fact that a tragic war was launched in Iraq,” he said in a last address to the UN General Assembly.

“This was done on the basis of false pretext, without the authorization of the UN Security Council,” he said.

He said the IAEA and UN weapons inspectors had found no evidence that Iraq’s nuclear programmes involved production of weapons of mass destruction.

“It gives me no consolation that the agency (IAEA)’s findings were subsequently vindicated,” he said, implying that the US military campaign in Iraq had caused high civilians casualties.

As Washington’s threats grow more serious, North Korea says it will strengthen its military deterrence against the United States in every way.

The ruling communist party newspaper Rodong Sinmun has accused Washington of pushing ahead with the agenda of instigating a second Korean war.

‘The US military strong-arm policy towards the DPRK (North Korea) is a vivid manifestation of its extreme hostility towards the DPRK and its socialism and Washington’s sinister scenario for the second Korean war,’ the paper said.

It said the recent US announcement that it is building an enormous bunker buster is a vivid manifestation of its extreme hostility toward Pyongyang.

Rodong Sinmun said no progress could be made in denuclearizing the Korean peninsula as long as Washington’s strong-arm policy existed, vowing to ‘bolster up its war deterrence in every way.’

As the US and South Korea are preparing to hold a joint military drill, North Korea has warned the two countries of ‘merciless’ retaliation.

A spokesman for Pyongyang’s military denounced the exercises starting Monday as “maneuvers for a nuclear war” against North Korea, AFP reported on Sunday.

“Should the US imperialists and the Lee Myung-Bak [South Korean president] threaten the DPRK (North Korea) with nukes, it will retaliate against them with nukes,” said the spokesman.

“If they threaten the DPRK with missiles, it will react to them with missiles,” he said.

“If they tighten ’sanctions’ and push confrontation to an extreme phase, the DPRK will react to them with merciless retaliation of its own style and an all-out war of justice,” he added.

Seoul and Washington have declared that the Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG) annual military drill, which will be held on August 17-27, is defensive at nature and will not aim North Korea.

The military exercise will involve 10,000 US soldiers and an unspecified number of South Korean troops.

The two Koreas remain technically at war after their 1950-1953 conflict ended in an armistice, and not a peace treaty.

Former US President Bill Clinton has reportedly met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il during his visit to Pyongyang as he delivers Washington’s message.

South Korean news agency Yonhap reported that Clinton had delivered a verbal message from President Barack Obama to Kim in a meeting on Tuesday.

Clinton has traveled to Pyongyang on an unannounced visit to the country to negotiate the release of two jailed American journalists.

Laura Ling and Euna Lee were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor in June after being found guilty of illegally entering North Korean territory in March.

The US and North Korea are also involved in a heated dispute over the communist regime’s nuclear weapons program.

The Obama administration, however, has refused to link the journalists’ case pursued by Clinton with the nuclear standoff between the two countries.

Meanwhile, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs denied that Clinton carried a message from Obama for Kim.

Clinton is the highest-ranking US official to visit North Korea since 2000.

The US President calls on China to help his country resolve the nuclear issues in North Korea and Iran amid the concerns of world powers over nuclear proliferation.

“Make no mistake: the more nations acquire these weapons, the more likely it is that they will be used,” said Barack Obama, who has made the elimination of nuclear weapons his signature priority,” AFP quoted President Barack Obama as saying in his opening remarks at a two-day US-China strategic dialogue in Washington.

He added that the US and China “must be united in preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon and urging the Islamic Republic to live up to its international obligations”.

Iran insists its nuclear activities are in line with its obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and are aimed at the civilian application of the technology.

The US and its European allies accuse the Tehran government of engaging in clandestine efforts to obtain nuclear weaponry, warning of a nuclear arms race in the volatile Middle East. They, however, ignore Israel’s possession of what is widely believed to be over 200 nuclear warheads.

Although Iran has always remained a signatory to the NPT, Israel, along with two other nuclear weapon producers, Pakistan and India have refused to sign the treaty.

In his Tuesday’s remarks, Obama also warned of a “nuclear arms race” in East Asia should the latest North Korean nuclear and missile tests go unchecked.

“Neither America nor China has an interest in a terrorist acquiring a bomb, or a nuclear arms race breaking out in East Asia,” he said.

Obama concluded that the two nations should “make it clear to North Korea that the path to security and respect can be traveled if they meet their obligations.”

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton floats the idea that North Korea may be attempting to provide Myanmar with nuclear weapons production capabilities.

Clinton arrived in Thailand on Tuesday to attend a regional security summit in Southeast Asia, bringing with her a message of warning: arms trade between the two socialist nations could be devastating.

The US secretary of state hinted at a recent episode in which a North Korean freighter with a suspected arms cargo set out on a mission to an “undisclosed destination”.

“We know that there are also growing concerns about military cooperation between North Korea and Burma, which we take very seriously,” said the top US diplomat.

Burma is the colonial name that was given to Myanmar under British rule. The name was changed in 1989 after an army general seized power in the second coup that followed the 1962 overthrow of a civilian government.

“It would be destabilizing for the region,” Clinton claimed. “It would pose a direct threat to Burma’s neighbors. And it is something, as a treaty ally of Thailand, that we are taking very seriously.”

US officials fear that North Korea might be seeking to provide weapons-grade nuclear material to the socialist military government in Myanmar in response to the UN imposition of sanctions on Pyongyang over its May nuclear tests.

“We think that there is a different path for North Korea to follow, that there is an opportunity which is theirs for the taking, but they have to be willing to change their behavior and agree to denuclearize North Korea,” Clinton continued.

The US secretary of state, who is due to sign a non-aggression treaty at the summit of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Phuket, Thailand, also took a swipe at Myanmar for its poor human rights records and its attempts to suppress democracy.