SEOUL - </strongNorth Korea demanded that the United States apologize for calling it part of an "axis of evil" and an "outpost of tyranny," urging Washington to provide the right conditions for a return to six-party talks on its nuclear drive.
The foreign ministry called on Washington to provide "justification" for North Korea to return to the talks, which have been stalled since September, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.
"We will go to the talks any time if the US takes a trustworthy sincere attitude and moves to provide conditions and justification for the resumption of the six-party talks," the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) quoted the foreign ministry as saying.
The ministry took issue with the "axis of evil" comment made by President George W. Bush (news - web sites) in 2002 and a comment by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) in January that the Stalinist state is an "outpost of tyranny".
"Bush, instead of retracting his remarks listing the DPRK (North Korea) part of 'an axis of evil', termed the government in the DPRK installed by its own people an 'outpost of tyranny', singling it out as the object to be removed to the last, outcries worse than those remarks," the report said.
"How can we sit at the negotiating table with the US given that the US has rejected the government of the DPRK? The US should apologize for his above-said remarks and withdraw them, renounce its hostile policy aimed at a regime change in the DPRK and clarify its political willingness to co-exist with the DPRK in peace and show it in practice."
Bush and Rice's comments were listed as "concrete facts" to show that the United States wanted to bring down North Korea's government.
However, the often-repeated demand that the United States renounce its "hostile policy" towards Pyongyang was not a precondition for the talks, the report said.
"If the US truly wants a negotiated solution to the DPRK-US nuclear issue, it should rebuild the groundwork of the talks it had destroyed unilaterally, renounce its hostile policy aimed at a regime change in the DPRK through practical actions and opt for co-existing with the DPRK," the report said.
It added that North Korea's goal of denuclearizing the Korean peninsula through dialogue remained unchanged.
The United States and North Korea have been locked in a stand-off since October 2002 when Washington accused Pyongyang of operating a secret program based on highly-enriched uranium, violating a 1994 arms control agreement.
North Korea denied the allegations. However it responded by expelling UN nuclear inspectors, re-starting a mothballed nuclear reactor and extracting weapons-grade plutonium from spent fuel rods.
On February 10 it announced an indefinite withdrawal from the six-party talks -- also involving China, South Korea (news - web sites), Japan and Russia -- and said it had developed nuclear weapons.
Also on Wednesday, China and South Korea agreed that North Korea could hold direct dialogue with the United States if it returns to the talks.
The agreement came at talks between Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei, Beijing's chief negotiator in the process, and South Korean officials, the latest in a series of diplomatic moves to coax Pyongyang back to the six-nation process.