September 10, 2003	Wednesday	Rajab 12, 1424

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SEOUL, Sept 9: North Korea celebrated its 55th birthday on Tuesday with a huge parade and a fresh vow to boost its nuclear deterrent force, but put no military hardware on display despite speculation it would showcase a new missile.

The communist state, which is involved in six-country efforts to defuse a crisis over its nuclear intentions, accused the United States of maintaining a hostile policy toward it.

But the parade, at which leader Kim Jong-il took the salute, passed off without any of the overt provocative gestures defence analysts had said were possible.

The chief of the North Korean army’s General Staff took a renewed swipe at the United States and said Pyongyang would defend its sovereignty at all costs.

“The DPRK will continue to increase its nuclear deterrent force as a means for just self-defence in order to defend the sovereignty of the country as the United States has not yet shown its will to drop its hostile policy,” General Kim Yong-chun said in a televised speech at the parade.

DPRK stands for the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Kim Jong-il reviewed thousands of goose-stepping soldiers and flag-waving civilians as they marched through Pyongyang’s Kim Il-sung Square, named after his late father and state founder.

The Soviet-backed Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was proclaimed on September 9, 1948, as the Cold War gripped the peninsula and split it into communist and capitalist camps.

More than half a century on, the North is close to economic collapse and at odds with regional powers — not just Washington — over its nuclear weapons ambitions.

“REALLY BLUFFING”: North Korea has said on several occasions since last month’s talks in Beijing on the North’s nuclear ambitions that it had no other choice but to enhance its atomic deterrent.

“Their re-announcement of nuclear deterrence is another negotiating tactic. They are really bluffing,” said a South Korean government official who declined to be named. “We can assume that first, there are no new missiles, and second, they will show up at the negotiating table in October.”

Defence analysts and South Korean media had said North Korea might wheel out a new missile at the parade.

But the two-hour event in Pyongyang was less dramatic than they predicted — a sign North Korea may have heeded warnings not to raise tensions while the six-way negotiations are in mid-flow.—Reuters