BERLIN, Jan 17: US Secretary of State Colin Powell was quoted on Friday as saying the United States was seeking a diplomatic solution to a stand-off with North Korea over the possible development of nuclear weapons by Pyongyang.

“We don’t want to escalate any crisis. We don’t want war. We have no unfriendly intentions towards North Korea,” Powell was quoted as saying in an interview with Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. “So we are seeking to solve the situation diplomatically.”

The crisis on the Korean Peninsula erupted last October when Washington said Pyongyang — part of what President George W. Bush has termed an “axis of evil” along with Iraq and Iran — had admitted to pursuing a nuclear weapons programme.

It escalated as North Korea expelled International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors, pulled out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and threatened to resume missile tests.

The standoff has added to geo-political tensions at a time when the US is threatening to attack Iraq if it does not reveal alleged illegal weapons programmes. Baghdad denies having any weapons of mass destruction.

Powell told the German newspaper the US believed it would be proven that Iraq was not cooperating with U.N. weapons inspectors in the country.

Powell sought to distinguish between the two cases, noting a previous agreement struck with North Korea for it to suspend an earlier nuclear programme.

“For eight years we thought we had put the genie back in the bottle. We did not realise there was a second bottle with a second genie: that North Korea had enriched uranium even though the plutonium facilities were under international monitoring.”

Powell gave no indication about how the US aimed to solve the North Korea stand off diplomatically.

After initially taking a hard line towards North Korea with some US officials hinting at the possibility of economic sanctions, the United States changed tack on Tuesday, offering to revive a stalled initiative to give impoverished North Korea food and energy aid if it abandoned its pursuit of a nuclear arsenal.

But North Korea accused Washington of trying to trick it into disarming, calling the offer “pie in the sky”.—Reuters