The US House of Representatives last week unanimously passed the bill, called "North Korea Human Rights Act of 2004," which moves to the Senate for a later vote before becoming law.

The bill calls for concrete steps on North Korean human rights abuses including aid to human rights groups and defectors.

North Korea's foreign ministry, in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency, branded the bill a tissue of lies that slandered the Stalinist state by raising "non-existent" human rights issues.

Faced with such "ceaseless political provocations," the statement attributed to an unnamed ministry spokesman said North Korea could pull out of talks with the United States and boost its military firepower.

North Korea "is compelled to ponder over whether there is any need to continue dialogue with the US for the settlement of the nuclear issue at the moment," the spokesman was quoted as saying.

"The reality reinforces our conviction that it is the only way of protecting the sovereignty of the country and defending socialism which guarantees our life (is) to increase its physical deterrent force for self-defence to cope with the US evermore undisguised hostile policy toward it."

Among provisions in the bill are financial aid to rights groups and defectors and measures allowing North Koreans to apply for asylum in the United States.

North Korea and the United States are engaged in six-nation talks on the nuclear standoff that also include China, Russia, Japan and South Korea.

Three rounds of talks have been held so far with another scheduled for September.

North Korea has offered to freeze its plutonium-producing nuclear weapons programme in return for aid and other concessions but Washington, which accuses Pyongyang of running a separate uranium-based scheme, is demanding an end to all the communist state's atomic ambitions.

WAR.WIRE