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SEOUL : North Korea Monday renewed its attacks on South Korea's new President Lee Myung-Bak, accusing him of pushing the peninsula closer to nuclear war.
The communist party newspaper Rodong Sinmun poured scorn on his decision to link economic aid to the North's nuclear disarmament, and said he should order the United States to withdraw "its nuclear weapons massively stockpiled in South Korea."
The United States, Seoul's long-time military ally, said it withdrew the last of its nuclear weapons from South Korea in 1991.
The paper in a commentary called on the US to end "its political and military threat to the DPRK's (North Korea's) security and sovereignty."
It said the Lee government's demand for Pyongyang to denuclearise as a precondition for better relations had caused a crisis in cross-border ties.
"It is as clear as noonday that their persistent insistence on the above-said provocative assertion would only lead to a war on this land," the paper said.
The comments come on the eve of a scheduled meeting in Singapore Tuesday between the US and North Korean negotiators in six-nation denuclearisation talks.
There is speculation that an agreement has been reached to move forward with the talks, which have been deadlocked since December by disagreements over the North's promised declaration of all its nuclear activities.
The talks group the two Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and host China, which US negotiator Christopher Hill will visit after Singapore.
Inter-Korean relations, in contrast, have grown tenser in recent days.
Analysts said the North may be trying to pressure Lee to drop his tougher line and to sway opinion against his conservative party ahead of Wednesday's general election in the South.
Since late March the North has expelled South Korean officials from a joint industrial complex, test-fired missiles and claimed that Seoul was breaching the disputed sea border.
It accused the South of planning a pre-emptive attack and threatened to turn its neighbour into "ashes" in response. Last week the North announced it would cut off all dialogue.
- AFP/vm
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