SEOUL, April 20: Koreans across the world should unite against US moves towards a war, North Korea’s official media said Sunday, warning the nation faced “national extermination”.

“All the Koreans in the North, the South and overseas should firmly unite as one to resolutely smash the US moves for a war of aggression in order to protect the destiny of the nation and the future of a reunified country,” an editorial from the Rodong Sinmun newspaper carried on the state-run KCNA news agency said.

“The grim reality in which the nation stands at the crossroads of a war or peace and reunification or national extermination calls on all Koreans to launch a patriotic struggle for peace against the US and war,” it said.

“The Korean nation already experienced a horrible war started by the United States in the 1950s. If another war breaks out on the Korean peninsula, it will be much more destructive than the last Korean war.

“The Korean nation can never be a victim of the US strategy for Asian domination. The whole Korean nation should resist the US war moves in a do-or-die spirit.”

North Korea has said it believes it could be a target for war after the US-led invasion of Iraq.

The secretive regime has been embroiled in a six-month stand-off with the United States over its nuclear drive which erupted in October when the United States accused North Korea of violating a 1994 pact.

Talks expected in Beijing this week to deal with the crisis were put in doubt Friday when KCNA carried a statement which quoted a North Korean foreign ministry spokesman saying Pyongyang was “successfully reprocessing more than 8,000 spent fuel rods at the final phase”.—AFP