The official Minju Joson newspaper said Washington's attempt to topple its regime through psychological warfare and espionage "is nothing but a very foolish and despicable plot based on an anachronistic delusion."

The paper, in a commentary carried by the official Korean Central News Agency, said the US is considering spending two million dollars a year to smuggle radios into North Korea "and increasing hours of false propaganda broadcasting against it."

It said the new CIA director Porter Goss also reportedly instructed his operatives to conduct "offensive intelligence activities" against the North.

"Their escalated anti-DPRK (North Korea) moves will result in nothing but completely checking the solution of the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula and bedevilling the relations of stand-off between the DPRK and the U.S," it said.

Three rounds of six-party talks have taken place since the stand-off over North Korea's drive for nuclear weapons began in October 2002. The North boycotted a fourth round set for September, blaming what it deemed Washington's hostile policy.

South Korean media said Thursday that informal six-nation talks -- involving the United States, China, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas -- may take place in mid-December in Beijing.

The confrontation began when Washington accused Pyongyang of running a secret uranium-enrichment program.

North Korea has denied running such a program. But it has demanded economic and diplomatic concessions in return for halting an older, plutonium-based nuclear arms program which was mothballed in 1994 but later restarted.

US President George W. Bush last month signed a law to promote human rights in North Korea. It provides four million dollars for expanding US radio broadcasts into the North.