Communist North Korea admitted publicly for the first time today that it was seeking nuclear weapons and blamed "hostile" US policy for forcing it to develop a deterrent.

Since the nuclear crisis erupted eight months ago, North Korea has often referred to its possession of a powerful physical deterrent.

But Pyongyang has carefully avoided admitting in public to either seeking or possessing nuclear weapons.

"We have no other option but to have nuclear deterrence if the US keeps its hostile policy and continues its nuclear threat towards the DPRK (North Korea)," the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said in a Korean language dispatch carried by South Korea's Yonhap news agency.

KCNA later carried the commentary on its English language service in which repeated reference was made to the need for nuclear deterrence against US hostility.

Pyongyang regularly accuses Washington of planning a preemptive strike on the Stalinist state.

The KCNA commentary stopped short of saying Pyongyang had already developed nuclear weapons, although North Korea has confessed as much in private, according to Washington.

The nuclear crisis was triggered in October last year when US assistant secretary of state James Kelly travelled to Pyongyang to confront the regime with evidence it was engaged in a clandestine nuclear weapons programme.

North Korea confessed outright to running the programme based on highly enriched uranium and said it had a right to nuclear deterrence, according to Kelly.

Pyongyang blamed a "hostile" US policy characterised by US President George W Bush's designation of North Korea as part of an "axis of evil".

US officials, however, assert that the programme predates the Bush administration by several years.

On the sidelines of talks with the US in Beijing in April, also attended by China, North Korea said it actually possessed nuclear weapons and was reprocessing plutonium in order to acquire several more, according to US officials.

The US believes that North Korea possesses one or two nuclear bombs from a nuclear programme based on plutonium that was frozen under a 1994 bilateral accord.

The collapse of the accord sparked an escalating crisis marked by the expulsion of international inspectors from North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear complex north of Pyongyang and North Korea's withdrawal from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The KCNA dispatch said that following the NPT pullout, North Korea was free from the International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards agreement, and enjoyed "the same legal status as the US and other countries possessing nuclear weapons..." KCNA also explained North Korean thinking behind its drive for nuclear deterrence, denying US charges that it was using blackmail to win concessions from Washington in the nuclear standoff.

"The DPRK's (North Korea's) intention to build up a nuclear deterrent force is not aimed to threaten and blackmail others but reduce conventional weapons under a long-term plan and channel manpower resources and funds into economic construction and the betterment of people's living," KCNA said in its English-language version.

North Korea's economy has collapsed over the past decade and millions of North Koreans have suffered starvation while 30% of its gross domestic product goes to maintain its 1,1-million strong army.

"The DPRK will build up a powerful physical deterrent force capable of neutralizing any sophisticated and nuclear weapons with less spending unless the US gives up its hostile policy toward the DPRK," KCNA added.

North Korea wants to resolve the crisis through one-on-one talks with the US while Washington says multilateral negotiations are needed to resolve a threat to world peace.

Pyongyang is also demanding security guarantees from Washington before it will address US "concerns" about nuclear weapons. – Sapa-AFP.