North Korea accuses South and U.S. of plotting nuclear war

MOSCOW, June 21 (RIA Novosti) - North Korea has accused the leaders of the United States and South Korea of plotting a nuclear attack on the country at their recent meeting.

Barack Obama met with Lee Myung-bak in Washington last week for discussions focused on the potential threat from North Korea in the wake of the reclusive communist state's May 25 nuclear test and planned ballistic tests.

"During his recent visit to the U.S., Lee discussed reinforcing the nuclear deterrent against his fellow countrymen in DPRK [North Korea's official name]. He is full of foolish ambitions to attain unification even through a nuclear war aided by foreign forces," the North's state-run weekly Tongil Sinbo in a commentary.

"It's not a coincidence at all for the U.S. to have brought numerous nuclear weapons into South Korea," the article, translated by South Korea's Yonhap agency, said.

At the U.S.-South Korean summit, the sides agreed to build a "strategic alliance" to "work together to achieve the complete and verifiable elimination of North Korea's nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs, as well as ballistic missile programs."

Yonhap cited a South Korean presidential official as saying Lee would seek a written commitment from the U.S. to provide a nuclear "umbrella" as part of an "extended deterrence" against Pyongyang.

The presidents' meeting came amid North Korea's threats to strengthen its nuclear arsenal, in defiance of a UN Security Council resolution passed after its nuclear test.

Both presidents urged the North to change its confrontational stance.

"We urge North Korea not to make any unacceptable demands because we really do not know what will happen if they keep on this path," Lee told reporters after the talks.

The U.S. leader said: "there has been a pattern in the past where North Korea behaves in a belligerent fashion and, if it waits long enough, it is rewarded... I think that is the pattern they have come to expect. The message we are sending them is that we are going to break that pattern."