"I think arguably that North Korea has the worst human rights record of any country anywhere in the world," said Bill Rammell, Under Secretary of State at Britain's Foreign Office.

Listing routine torture, summary public executions, arbitrary detention of families for up to three generations and forced abortions, Rammell admitted that his unusual meeting with North Korean officials in Pyongyang last September had not yielded concrete results.

"If anything the country has gone backwards," he commented on the sidelines of the UN Human Rights Commission, flanked by two North Korean refugees who gave a harrowing account of their years in prison camps.

Rammell later told journalists he felt there was still space for an attempt to engage North Korea in dialogue and vowed to maintain pressure.

"If, however, North Korea does not in time, genuinely and constructively, engage both on our human rights concerns and on the concerns about its possession of nuclear weapons, then we will have to look for tougher options of containment or sanctions," he added.

The British minister confirmed that European countries were preparing to submit a resolution to the 53-member Commission condemning abuse by Pyongyang and continuing the mandate of a UN rights expert to monitor the country.

North Korea had indicated during Rammell's visit there last November that it might allow the Special Rapporteur, Vitit Muntarbhorn, on a mission.

"I think it is clear now that North Korea is not intending to do that," Rammell said.

North Koreans who fled from the secretive state after being imprisoned in camps urged the international community to intervene Thursday.

"Though you have ears, you cannot hear, you have a mouth but you cannot speak in North Korea," said Kim Tae Jin at a meeting sponsored by Britain.

The 49-year-old said he was tortured and interrogated for eight months after being expelled from China, where he had become a Christian, in 1986.

"They forced me to sit on quicklime and it was raining at the time. I still have the burns and had to suffer for a long time," he added.

Sixty-seven year old Kim Young Soon said she was detained along with her father, mother and children for eight years in 1970 while her husband was sent to another camp "where people never came out alive".

"I was sent to prison camp for talking about the second wife of (former North Korean leader) Kim Il Sung," said Kim, who worked in a shop for foreigners.

Camp inmates, many of whom were "artists" or women and children, were forced to find food for themselves and faced a harsh regime.

Her mother, father and one her sons died there. Another son was shot dead while trying to escape to China years later.

"Many people died of starvation and all the original 'sinners' died in the first year," she said, referring to the family member who had orginally committed an offence in North Korean eyes.

"Sometimes if we dozed off during a self-criticism session we were forced to slap each other." Kim managed to reach South Korea in November 2003.

A North Korean delegate at the UN meeting this week dismissed critical statements of his country's human rights situation as propaganda and "psychological warfare" by "hostile forces".

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