N. Korea slams calls for arms inspections

SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea has spurned U.S. calls for arms inspection and threatened to take "necessary countermeasures" against the superpower.

"The U.S. is unreasonably demanding the DPRK receive an 'inspection' just as a thief turns on the master with a club," the North Korean foreign ministry said in a statement carried on state-run Korea Central News Agency (KCNA).

DPRK is the acronym for North Korea's official name -- the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

On Monday, U.S. President George W. Bush hinted Iraq could be its next target in his war on terrorism, and urged North Korea to allow inspectors to determine whether it has been producing weapons of mass destruction.

Bush said North Korea should allow the inspections if it wanted better relations with the United States.

But North Korea dismissed U.S. statements urging it to do more to cooperate against terrorism as "quite nonsensical".

Earlier, U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton told a conference in Geneva that the North was a leading violator of the international treaty banning biological weapons.

North Korea is believed by Western and South Korean experts to have some 5,000 tons of chemical weapons and an unknown stockpile of germ warfare agents, including anthrax and smallpox.

Missile Defense

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Pyongyang also protested over U.S. intentions to establish a missile defense system and implications that the communist north is proliferating its missile technology.

"It is preposterous for the U.S., styling itself a 'superpower', to claim that it should establish the missile defense system for fear of the DPRK's missile [program] solely meant for self-defense," the North Korean foreign ministry said.

North Korea said the claim is a "blatant challenge and a despicable plot" by the United States to divert international resentment to the north.

"The groundless charges brought by the U.S. against the DPRK over the issues of 'terrorism' and 'missile threat' go to clearly prove that its talk about an unconditional dialogue with the DPRK is nothing but hypocrisy and it is, in fact, not interested in the dialogue and improved relations."

"Under this situation the DPRK cannot sit idle but is left with no option but to take necessary countermeasures," it said, without elaborating.

Cross-border fire

Korean border posts traded fire. The North says it was 'military provocation'

North Korea has also blamed the United States for escalated tension in the Korean peninsula.

It said it refuse to engage in talks with Seoul due to the presence of U.S. soldiers in South Korea.

On Tuesday, North and South Korea have briefly exchanged fire across their heavily armed De-militarized Zone.

North Korea did not comment on the incident, but its state media said the South had "committed a military provocation by introducing two combat armored cars into the De-militarized Zone."

South Korea and the communist North are still technically at war since the 1950-53 Korean conflict, which ended in an armed truce.