N Korea condemns US 'provocation'

The US had a cargo of North Korean missiles stopped

North Korea has accused the United States of "deliberate military provocation" over the stopping of a cargo ship carrying 15 Scud missiles on Tuesday.

This is little short of a declaration of war

North Korean statement

The angry statement came as North Korea upped the stakes in a row with the US over the secretive state's nuclear plans.

North Korea asked the world's nuclear watchdog to remove security seals and surveillance cameras from a mothballed nuclear facility, edging towards its threat to reactivate the plant and break a key 1994 agreement.

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The showdown threatened to lift tensions on the divided Korean peninsula to the highest level in nearly a decade.

According to a White House spokesman, South Korean President Kim Dae-Jung told his US counterpart George W Bush that North Korea's nuclear plans were "unacceptable".

And International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) chairman Mohammed El-Baradei urged Pyongyang to act with restraint.

The lifting of the nuclear freeze should be implemented under IAEA safeguards, he said, adding that North Korea had not requested the departure of his inspectors.

'Wanton violation'

North Korea called recent talks on the nuclear issue between the US and South Korea "little short of a declaration of war against the DPRK", using North Korea's official title.

	Nuclear power? May already have nuclear weapons Could be months away from mass plutonium production Has missiles with 2,000-km range See also: North Korea's nuclear programme

Analysts see North Korea's threats as bargaining chips to try to persuade the US and its regional allies to lift trade barriers and increase aid.

But Washington has shown no signs of changing its hard-line policy on the state, which Mr Bush has included in an "axis of evil".

Pyongyang said on Friday that the stopping of the ship "wantonly violated the routine trade between countries", and accused the US of "high-handed piracy".

Following the interception, North Korea warned that it would unfreeze work at a nuclear plant in Yongbyon.

North Korea said it needed the nuclear power to make up for the electricity shortfall caused by the ending of heavy fuel oil shipments, which Washington and its allies halted after Pyongyang allegedly admitted to an another nuclear programme in October.

No war talk

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer described the threat to reactivate the plant as "regrettable" but said it would not force Washington into dialogue with Pyongyang.

North Korea: Facts and figures

But neither is there talk of military action from the White House.

President Bush has denied that the US is guilty of double standards in using diplomatic pressure to isolate North Korea, while warning of war against Iraq.

"Not every issue requires a potential military response," he said, in an interview with ABC News to be broadcast on Friday.

The BBC's Matt Frei in Washington says that war is not an option with North Korea, which has a million men under arms and is in striking range of the 37,000 US forces massed in the South.

Meanwhile Japan described the threat as "deplorable", but nevertheless said it would try to restart talks with North Korea.

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	Yongbyon: Site includes a 5-MWe experimental nuclear power reactor and a partially completed plutonium extraction facility. The US believes the reactor and extraction plant have been used to produce plutonium - possibly enough for 1 or 2 nuclear weapons. Activities at site frozen under 1994 Agreed Framework Taechon: 200-MWe nuclear power reactor - construction halted under Agreed Framework Pyongyang: Laboratory-scale "hot cells" that may have been used to extract small quantities of plutonium Kumho: Site of two 1,000-MWe light water reactors under construction by Kedo

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