N Korea: US plotting nuclear attack

The Korean peninsula is on "the brink of war", North Korea has said, as it accused the United States of plotting a nuclear attack against it. In an editorial published on Tuesday, the ruling party newspaper Rodon Sinmun said North Korea faced "a new war scheme by US hostile forces" and vowed the North would never give up its nuclear weapons programme. It reiterated pledges by Pyongyang to bolster its nuclear deterrent, arguing that the US has been working on a new "nuclear war scenario for aggression". Blaming what it said was a plot to occupy North Korean by force, it said North Korea had been "compelled to bolster our nuclear deterrent".North Korea has made similar comments almost daily since threatening last week to carry out fresh nuclear and missile tests, unless the United Nations apologises for punishing it over a recent rocket launch.SanctionsNorth Korea said the April 5 launch placed an experimental communications satellite into orbit, and has defended what it says is its sovereign right to a peaceful space programme. But the US, South Korea and Japan say the rocket launch was a disguised missile test. North Korea's foreign ministry on Monday denounced the US for trying to find an excuse for applying sanctions against Pyongyang. In mid-April the UN Security Council imposed sanctions against Pyongyang, banning transactions and calling on UN member states to freeze the assets of three North Korean business entities. The North protested by announcing that it had started reprocessing spent fuel rods at the Yongbyon nuclear complex to make weapons-grade plutonium. It had already announced earlier that it was abandoning a six-nation nuclear disarmament pact with the US, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia.