February 7, 2003	Friday	Zul Hijjah 5,1423

SEOUL, Feb 6: North Korea said on Thursday it was preparing for total war with the United States and threatened a pre-emptive strike if Washington sent extra forces to the region.

The North’s top general, Kim Yong-Chun, a close adviser to supreme leader Kim Jong-Il, urged the nation’s million-strong army to prepare for a final showdown with US “imperialists”.

A White House spokesman said the United States had “robust plans for any contingencies” tied to its nuclear row with North Korea.

“We’ve heard much talk from North Korea before. Obviously the United States is very prepared, with robust plans, for any contingencies,” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters.

“This type of talk and the type of actions North Korea has engaged in — or says it’s engaging in — only hurt North Korea,” the spokesman said.

“They further isolate the North Korean people from the modern world. They lead to a world in which people are starved, people are denied basic human rights and that’s the real cause for concern,” he added.

“But we always have contingency plans,” said Fleischer.

According to North Korea’s official media, Kim, chairman of the North Korean army’s joint chiefs of staff, told military top brass on Wednesday to prepare for battle.

“He called for increasing the capability of the people’s army in every way ... so as to win a brilliant victory in the final showdown with the US imperialists,” said Rodong Sinmum.

At the same time, a top foreign ministry official told visiting British journalists that Pyongyang would not stand idle while Washington boosted its forces in the region.

The pre-emptive strike would come if Washington carried out a plan to reinforce its firepower in the Pacific, North Korea’s foreign ministry deputy director Ri Pyong-Gap said, according to the BBC.

“The pre-emptive attack is not something only the United States can do. We can also do that when it is a matter of life or death,” Ri said.

“We are fully ready to have a conversation with the United States. At the same time, we are fully ready to have war with the United States.”

US President George Bush has said he wants to resolve the crisis peacefully but Pyongyang dismissed that as a “smokescreen” to entice the North to drop its guard while Washington readies invasion plans.

US officials have said the Pentagon has put 24 long-range bombers on alert for possible deployment to the Pacific to back up US forces in South Korea.

Ri said his government would regard any such buildup as an invasion or attack against it.

Pyongyang has repeatedly accused Washington of planning to launch a nuclear strike against it. Those plans were now in the last phase of implementation, according to the official media.

Rodong said the call for a US troop buildup suggested “a new war will inevitably break out on the Korean peninsula and it will develop to be a nuclear war”.

North Korea would answer “total war with a total war”, the newspaper said.

Tension over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions mounted on Thursday after Pyongyang official media said a nuclear plant frozen for the past eight years under an arms control accord with Washington had been restarted.

The North maintains that its decision to restart the Yongbyon nuclear plant announced was to ease its energy crisis, though experts say the experimental five megawatt reactor that can produce plutonium has negligible power generation capacity.

In Washington, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Wednesday North Korea would be making a mistake if it felt it could exploit US preoccupation with Iraq.

“To the extent the world thinks the United States is focused on problems in Iraq, it’s conceivable someone could make a mistake and believe that’s an opportunity for them to take an action which they otherwise would have avoided,” he told members of the US Congress.

South Korea’s president-elect Roh Moo-Hyun, a champion of peaceful dialogue with North Korea who takes office in 19 days, responded to the deepening crisis by vowing to preserve peace.— AFP