"Cheney is hated as the most cruel monster and blood-thirsty beast as he has drenched various parts of the world in blood," a North Korea foreign ministry spokesman said.

The attack came in response to Cheney's comment on North Korean leader Kim in an interview with CNN's "Larry King Live" program aired on Monday.

Cheney called Kim an "irresponsible" leader who does not care for his people and accused him of running a police state.

The vice president's statement came amid efforts to reconvene six-party talks to end the stanoff over North Korea's nuclear weapons programs.

Last month US officials met North Korean diplomats at the United Nations in New York, triggering optimism that talks were in the pipeline one year after the third round was held in Beijing.

"What Cheney uttered at a time when the issue of the six-party talks is high on the agenda is little short of telling the DPRK (North Korea) not to come out for the talks," the spokesman was quoted as saying by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) monitored in Seoul.

North Korea has boycotted China-hosted nuclear disarmament talks -- which also include the United States, South Korea, Japan and Russia -- since June last year.

In a separate statement, North Korea denounced the deployment of 15 F-117 stealth bombers by the United States to South Korea. It said the move was part of preparations for a preemptive nuclear strike on the country.

The deployment announced by Washington last week was an unpardonable act, said the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland, a state organization in charge of Korean affairs.

"We ... bitterly denounce the deployment of Stealth fighter bombers in South Korea by the United States as a ... provocation of a war against the North and the worst malicious challenge to the Korean nation," it said.

"This proves that the US scheme of preemptive nuclear attack is systematically going over from violent words to operational plan and from the plan to the stage of military action," the committee said.

Also, Pyongyang declared a permanent end to US recovery work of the remains of American soldiers killed during the 1950-1953 Korean War in response to a recent US temporary halt.

North Korea's military said it has decided to disband a unit which has helped US officials recover the remains of 8,000 US soldiers killed in its territory during the 1950-53 Korean War.

The move was in response to the Pentagon's decision two weeks ago to suspend its recovery mission in North Korea because of the uncertainty over the nuclear standoff.

"In consequence, the US remains buried in Korea can never be recovered but are bound to be reduced to earth with the flow of time," a military spokesman said.

The Pentagon's decision came on May 25 just after a 27-member military team left North Korea with a set of remains believed to be of US soldiers.

US President George W. Bush said Tuesday the recovery effort was halted pending "an assessment" of the safety of US officials rather than due to any "immediate threat."

Since 1996, the US military has conducted 33 missions in North Korea to recover more than 220 sets of remains.

The recovery missions were briefly shut down in 2002 and 2003 after North Korea told a visiting US diplomat that it had nuclear weapons, sparking a crisis that has turned into the drawn out nuclear weapons standoff.