Rodong Sinmun, the North's ruling Workers Party newspaper, criticized Washington was taking a series of "smear" moves to topple the Pyongyang regime and blockade the communist state.

Warning the "foundation of the six-party talks is collapsing," Rodong denounced recent US claims of human rights abuses and drug trafficking in North Korea. It also targetted new US military buildup in and around South Korea.

"This is little short of laying a 'time bomb' in the way of the six-party talks and a deliberate act of driving the talks to a collapse," Rodong said in a commentary carried by the Korean Central News Agency.

Rodong said some leaders in Washington were seeking to delay the six-way talks due to resume in Beijing by the end of September.

"Some of the US ruling quarters even assert that the six-party talks are unnecessary and meaningless and the next round of the talks may be put off till the time after the presidential election slated for November," it said.

North Korea's foreign ministry spokesman had hinted Monday that Pyongyang may not attend a working group meeting to prepare for the next round of talks, citing what it called a hard-line US policy.

But Washington and Beijing played down the North Korean hints.

A third round of talks which brought together the United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia in Beijing in an effort to resolve the impasse ended in June without tangible progress.

The stand-off over North Korea's quest for nuclear weapons erupted in October 2002 when the United States accused Pyongyang of operating a nuclear weapons program based on enriched uranium, violating the 1994 nuclear freeze of its separate plutonium producing program.

Little progress has been made at the previous three rounds of talks.

WAR.WIRE