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SEOUL: North Korea's military warned on Friday that a deal to disarm its nuclear programme could be scrapped if the United States keeps "pressurising" the country, the official KCNA news agency reported.
The North will step up efforts to protect itself from a "US nuclear attack and pre-emptive strike" if the US keeps "pressurising the DPRK under the pretext of the nuclear issue", it said.
"In that case, it is as clear as noonday that neither the implementation of the February 13 agreement nor success of the six-party talks will be possible," the military said in a statement carried by KCNA.
UN weapons inspectors are expected to return to North Korea on Saturday amid hopes that the secretive regime would begin shutting a key nuclear facility as part of the February deal worked out in six-nation talks.
The North, which carried out its first test of an atomic bomb last year, has repeatedly said that it needs nuclear weapons to deter the United States from a pre-emptive attack aimed at toppling the Pyongyang regime.
The United States withdrew its nuclear weapons from South Korea in December 1991. It maintains 29,500 troops to back up the South Korean military.
"The US is a belligerent party hostile to the DPRK (North Korea) and the two countries are still technically at war," said the statement, attributed to the chief of the army's mission to the border truce village of Panmunjom.
"Under this situation nobody can deny that the confrontation between the DPRK and the US means a life and death one.
"It is the undeniable and legitimate right of the DPRK to have in place all the necessary self-defensive means to cope with the threat and blackmail of the US in order to protect its right to existence."
- AFP/so
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