Countdown to Armageddon

national | miscellaneous | news report Thursday February 06, 2003 15:13 by Simpson Eh?

Sabres Ready - Rattle!

North Korea may strike US forces pre-emptively rather than wait for an US attack after a war with Iraq

Now that the US War Machine looks like it will get its way on Iraq we are now faced with Armageddon! Batten down the hatches choppy waters ahead. Awaiting a response from the third spoke in the 'axis of evil'.

North Korea says it could launch pre-emptive strike on US

(From Ireland.com: Last updated: 06-02-03, 08:05)

North Korea may strike US forces pre-emptively rather than wait for an US attack after a war with Iraq, a spokesman for the communist state told Britain's Guardian newspaper in Pyongyang.

"The United States says that after Iraq, we are next", the Guardian quoted Mr Ri Pyong-gap, a North Korean Foreign Ministry deputy director, as saying amid rising tensions over a nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula.

"But we have our own countermeasures. Pre-emptive attacks are not the exclusive right of the US," said Mr Ri, according to the Guardian . His reported remarks went further than numerous recent dire warnings issued by Pyongyang's state media.

A Guardian correspondent, one of several British journalists admitted to secretive North Korea this month, quoted Mr Ri as saying that the current nuclear stand-off was more dangerous than that a decade ago when Washington and Pyongyang nearly went to war.

"The present situation can be called graver than it was in 1993. It will be touch and go," the daily quoted Mr Ri as saying.