December 31, 2002	Tuesday	Shawwal 26, 1423

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SEOUL, Dec 30: North Korea has hinted that it could pull out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), as Washington said it had no plans for a military strike to resolve a deepening nuclear crisis.

In a statement on Sunday night, North Korea’s foreign ministry blamed the United States for the collapse of a 1994 accord under which Pyongyang agreed to freeze its nuclear programme and to stay within the nuclear safeguard treaty.

The 1994 Agreed Framework (AF) helped North Korea find itself “in a special status” where its withdrawal from the NPT was suspended until the construction of light-water nuclear reactors by a US-led consortium, the statement said.

“And the US began ditching even the AF, thus putting this special status of ours in peril,” it said.

North Korea announced its withdrawal from the NPT in March 1993, triggering a nuclear crisis that brought the Korean peninsula to the brink of war.

Three months later it suspended its threatened NPT withdrawal after the United States agreed to start dialogue on improving ties.

“We have been left with no option but to consider self-defensive means to cope with the threat in order to protect the nation’s dignity and right to existence,” the statement said.

Pyongyang, however, left open the door for dialogue with Washington to end a showdown over the country’s renewed nuclear programme.

In Washington, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said the United States had no plan to strike North Korea, which is still technically at war with South Korea after the 1950-1953 war ended in stalemate.

“Military action is never off the table in the sense that it is not an option,” Powell told CBS television. “We just don’t think the circumstances at this time require us to point a gun at someone’s head.”

But he said President George Bush “always has every option”.

The nuclear crisis dragged South Korea’s stock index down 4.5 per cent on Monday to 627.55. Fears over a US-North Korea showdown and US-Iraq tensions also pulled share prices down in other Asian countries.

The 1994 deal has fallen apart since US revelations in October that North Korea is running a weapons programme based on enriched uranium technology.

The energy-poor country said on Dec 12 it was restarting a five-megawatt facility at Yongbyon because it needed electricity after the United States cut off fuel shipments last month.—AFP