05 March 2005	Saturday	23 Muharram 1426

SEOUL, March 4: North Korea has postponed a regular session of its parliament, the official news agency said on Friday, in an unprecedented move that puzzled officials and analysts who follow the reclusive communist state.

The presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly (SPA) announced on Thursday it was postponing the third session of the 11th assembly, originally slated for Wednesday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said, with little elaboration.

Analysts said the timing of the postponement - coming soon after the North declared it had nuclear weapons and later threatened to resume missile testing - indicated an attempt by Pyongyang to maximize its bargaining power as regional powers work to coax it back for negotiations aimed at curbing its nuclear ambitions.

An assembly session might have proved a distraction that Pyongyang would want to avoid at this critical juncture, said Paik Hak-soon, head of North Korea studies at the Sejong Institute, a prominent national security think-tank based south of Seoul.

"The North has taken a big calculated risk of using the nuclear card, and it must be aware that, if the United States does not cooperate in this game, the repercussion would be tremendous," he said, adding: "Any kind of assessment would be speculative at this point."

The KCNA said the decision had come "at the requests made by deputies to the SPA in all domains of the socialist construction". A key South Korean government official who follows changes in the North said this was the first time that Pyongyang had postponed an SPA session after it had been publicly called, although previously sessions had been skipped altogether. -Reuters