Pyongyang blames US "hostility" for the nuclear impasse and says Washington pays lip-service to diplomacy while hiding its real intention to resolve the stand-off by military force.

"The US would be well-advised to stop such foolish an act as digging its own grave, make a bold switchover in its anachronistic hostile policy ... and buckle down to solving the issues between the DPRK (North Korea) and the US including the nuclear issue," said Minju Josun, the official newspaper of the North Korean cabinet.

Pyongyang said Washington deliberately sabotaged six-way talks on the nuclear crisis held in Beijing last month while forging ahead with plans to launch nuclear war.

Washington has insisted that North Korea scrap its nuclear weapons drive before it will consider offering the Stalinist state concessions including economic and security benefits.

North Korea says it wants the security of its regime guaranteed by the United States through a legally binding non-aggression pact before it will address the nuclear issue.

With no sign of a change in US policy, North Korea will step-up its nuclear weapons drive, the ruling Workers' Party newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, said.

"In view of the situation in Korea, increasing the nuclear deterrent force provides the only way of checking the US moves to provoke a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula and protecting peace and security," it said.

Washington says North Korea already has one or two nuclear weapons and could rapidly build several more from reprocessed spent nuclear fuel rods.

Some 8,000 rods were sealed at North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear complex, 90 kilmeters (50 miles) north of Pyongyang, under a 1994 US-North Korea accord freezing the country's nuclear programme.

The accord unravelled last October, when Washington said North Korea had admitted to running a clandestine nuclear weapons programme in breach of the agreement.

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