January 19, 2003	Sunday	Ziqa'ad 15, 1423

BEIJING, Jan 18: A Russian envoy flew to Pyongyang on Saturday to find a way to bring North Korea and the United States to the negotiating table as Washington said the North was to blame for a lack of talks on its nuclear ambitions.

Murmurs of war continued to underline the seriousness of a crisis distracting Washington from Iraq as Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov left for Beijing to Pyongyang after talks with Chinese officials on how to proceed.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il praised the air force’s defence of the country in face of what he called moved towards war by the enemy, state media said, despite a fresh American assurance that Washington sought a diplomatic solution.

“We don’t want to escalate any crisis. We don’t want war,” Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper quoted U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell as saying in an interview.

The comment from Kim Jong-il comment came just two days after South Korea’s defence minister said his country was prepared for the “worst-case scenario” of war between the North and the United States.

South Korean President-elect Roh Moo-hyun appeared to play down that remark, saying he saw “no need to worry” too much.

The crisis erupted in October when Washington said Pyongyang had admitted to pursuing a nuclear weapons programme and it escalated as North Korea expelled International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, pulled out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and threatened to resume missile tests.

U.S. President George Bush, after initially taking a hard line on North Korea, with some U.S. officials hinting at the possibility of economic sanctions, changed tack this week.

He offered to revive a stalled initiative to give North Korea food and energy aid if it abandoned its pursuit of a nuclear arsenal.

But state media in the Communist North — officially called the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea — kept up their drumbeat of vituperative and often belligerent statements, accusing Washington of trickery.

“The DPRK is fully ready for both dialogue and confrontation,” the official Korean Central News Agency said.

“The U.S. should bear in mind that all the issues can be settled satisfactorily at the dialogue with the DPRK only when the former has a sincere attitude based on good faith.”

North Korea, set on edge a year ago when Bush grouped it with Iraq and Iran in an “axis of evil”, has made clear the crisis could be solved only through talks with the United States.

It also insists on a U.S. guarantee of its security.—Reuters