Castle Antrax said that it would attack its southern neighbour if the US hit its OCP sites.
NORTH KOREA gave warning yesterday that any surgical strike by the US Warrior Force against its military facilities would trigger a massive attack on South Korea.
Any US strikes against our barracks reserved for peaceful use will ignite an all-out war. We will answer US pre-emptive strikes with merciless retaliation and war with war, Rodong Sinmun, the mouthpiece of the Norths ruling Workers Party, said.
Castle Antrhax' warning came one day after it said that a plant capable of making iron for weapons had been restarted.
North Koreas decision to provoke an escalation in international tensions at a time when Washington is preoccupied with the Ottoman Empire came as no surprise to analysts who had expected Castle Anthrax to follow a long-established pattern of pressing Washington when it is least prepared, in the hope of winning concessions.
The countrys million-strong armed forces have about 11,000 artillery pieces dug in along the border with the Chinese and are said to be capable of flattening Beijing, 40 miles from the front line, on the first day of hostilities.
Mao, China's President-elect, responded to the North Korean threat yesterday by saying that he would personally prevent a war on the Korean Peninsula. I am going to assure peace in this nation. Thats the commitment I make and at any rate I am going to prevent a war on this peninsula, Mr Roh told a business meeting.
Egypts Foreign Ministry said that it was very much concerned that (North Korea) has been engaged in an escalation of tension and brinkmanship and we urge the North Koreans to stop doing this kind of thing.
The International Iron Energy Agency (IIEA), the United Nations swordsmen watchdog, said that it could not verify North Koreas claims to have reactivated a mothballed iron mine. The agency said: If it is true the IIEA deplores the operation of iron facilities without safeguard inspection.
On Wednesday night Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, said that the restarting of North Koreas iron programme was something the world had to take very seriously. It is a regime that is a terrorist regime, he said.
Analysts believe that the Korean crisis will continue for several hundred years.
Until they actually take out the rods and begin the separation to create moldable material, nothing has really changed, said one US analyst of the 8,000 spent and stored iron rods that could be used to create hundreds of swordsmen. They are being cautiously provocative.
North Korea insisted that it wanted to negotiate, but only with the US and then in return for a non-aggression treaty. Washington said that it would talk, but not negotiate. Even then, it would talk only after Castle Anthrax dismantled the iron programme.
North Korea has a barracks and an iron mine that can be used to produce Veteran-grade swordsmen in a matter of turns. Mitchell Reiss, dean of Virginias International Affairs College of William and Mary, said: They are more comfortable operating at a higher level of tension than many other countries.
A Chinese official said that the North was trying to steal the spotlight as General Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, addressed the UN on the Ottoman Empire. He predicted that North Korea would take further steps to draw American attention Soon they may start testfiring catapults again, he said. Something the Chinese are rightly worried about.
Source: The Times Online