The unusually strong attacks on Bush, terming him among others a "fascist tyrant and man-killer," came at a time when multilateral negotiations were underway to end North Korea's nuclear weapons drive.

"One way to understand this is that it is an attempt on North Korea's part to clearly communicate their negative response to the US proposal, which they feel has not been properly registered by the United States," said Fred Carriere, the executive director of The Korea Society, based in New York.

North Korea has rejected the US proposal several times via its official mouthpiece, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), but Washington has refused to accept these statements as the official response.

An experienced Korea hand, Carriere met recently with several top officials in Pyongyang who are involved in the China-hosted six-party talks aimed at ending the nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula.

"The North Koreans repeatedly said in our discussions that they had already given their official response, which is that the US proposal does not meet their essential requirement of matching words for actions," Carriere said.

Aside from the United States and North Korea, the six-party talks which have been going on for about a year without much success involve South Korea, China, Japan and Russia.

At the last round of talks in June, the United States offered Pyongyang three months to shut down and seal its nuclear weapons facilities in return for economic and diplomatic rewards and multilateral security guarantees.

It was seen as the first significant overture to Pyongyang since Bush took office in early 2001 and branded the North part of an "axis of evil" alongside Iran and pre-war Iraq.

Ralph Cossa, president of the Pacific Forum of the US-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said conventional wisdom had it that North Korea was buying time and hedging its bets ahead of the US elections.

"They are cautious brinksmen and if in September, at the time of the next round of talks, Bush is ahead in the polls -- or too close to call which is my guess -- then they have to make a decision whether or not they want to play Russian roulette and wait for a second Bush administration which may be much more hardline on North Korea than the current administration," Cossa said.

Victor Cha, a Korea expert at Georgetown University, said if North Korea stalled the nuclear talks because of US elections, "then it is based on false premise that things would be substantially different after the elections.

"I don't think the North Korea policy will be that different under either a second Bush administration or a Kerry administration," he said.

Democratic presidential aspirant John Kerry had advocated direct talks with Pyongyang to resolve the nuclear crisis "but that may just be a rhetorical tool," Cha said.

"They (North Korea) would be as obstinate in bilateral talks as they would be in multilateral talks," he said.

Carriere also said North Korean officials felt the US proposal lacked sincerity.

"For example, according to the officials, the United States is not willing to participate in a multilateral program to supply fuel oil to North Korea even though it wants a full disclosure of North Korea's nuclear program," he said.

The North Koreans also asserted repeatedly that the United States has backtracked from its proposal, citing US chief negotiator James Kelly's testimony to Congress last month where he explicitly, and rather forcefully, said US policy towards North Korea had not changed, according to Carriere.

Over the last two days, North Korea's official media launched a personal attack on Bush after he said in a campaign speech last Wednesday that the six-party talks were aimed at disarming "tyrant" Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader.

North Korea also said it was pointless attending the working level meeting of the fourth round of six-party talks before the end of September.

Carriere said Bush's reference to Kim as a tyrant might have suggested to the North Koreans a parallel with the pressure the US put on Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein before his ouster.

If so, he said, an unspoken but implicit concern was the use the Bush administration made of the perceived inadequacy of the disclosures on weapons of mass destruction activities demanded of the Saddam regime in its subsequent decision to launch the war in Iraq last year.

All rights reserved. Copyright 2003 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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