North Korea has declared it will make no concessions to end the ongoing nuclear crisis and pledged instead to build up its defense and fend off the kind of "miserable fate" that has befallen Iraq . The official daily of the ruling Korean Workers Party, Rodong Sinmun, said that while it was too early to make a judgement on the Iraq war, "it it clear that the destiny of Iraq is at stake due to its concession and compromise." In a strongly worded commentary, it sought to draw lessons form the US-led war on Iraq.

"The DPRK (North Korea) would have already met the same miserable fate as Iraq's had it compromised its revolutionary principle and accepted the demand raised by the imperialists and its followers for 'nuclear inspection' and disarmament," the daily said editorially.

It said the Workers Party's "army-based policy" and defensive capacity were the "No. 1 lifeline" of the communist state and provided a sure guarantee not only for protecting its sovereignty but ensuring peace and stability on the Korean peninsula.
"The DPRK will increase its self-defensive capability and fully demonstrate its might under the uplifted banner of the army-based policy," it said.

"No one should expect the dprk to make any slightest concession or compromise. Those who stage sabre-rattling against it had better stop it."

The United States on Friday rejected a call by the new South Korean government for a "bold" initiative to engage North Korea, on a par with former president Richard Nixon's epochal 1970s overtures to communist China.

South Korean Foreign Minister Yoon Young-Kwan offered the suggestion before talks with Secretary of State Colin Powell on the simmering crisis touched off by the Stalinist state's drive for nuclear weapons.

But Powell said the Bush administration had already shelved what it described as a "bold" approach of measures to engage North Korea, until Pyongyang agrees to stand down its drive for nuclear weapons.

Yoon said he detected signs of future flexibility in the US approach to North Korea after a speech to a Washington think-tank but said what was needed was a diplomatic coup comparable to the US opening of Mao Zedong's China.

"In the early 1970s, the Nixon government took a bold diplomatic initiative with China," Yoon said in a speech hosted by the School of Advanced International Studies.

"The same approach could be applied to North Korea."

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North Korea says there can be no compromise in the peninsula's ongoing nuclear crisis.(AFP)