Kim turned 62 Monday, with his birthday celebrated as the impoverished country's biggest holiday. The world celebrated along with North Korea, according to the isolated nation's official propaganda machine.

"Preparatory committees were formed in over 50 countries of the world to celebrate February 16 and greet the sun of the 21st century," said the official Korean Central News Agency.

"Six months or one year were set as celebration periods, unprecedented in history."

Among congratulatory messages, a tribute from Russian President Vladimir Putin was singled out.

"I hope that your efforts to enhance the welfare of your people, boost the traditional relations between our two countries and resolve the Korean problem peacefully will pay off," Putin said in his message quoted by Pyongyang Radio.

The birthday comes nine days before North Korea, the United States, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia meet in Beijing on February 25 for six-party nuclear crisis talks.

On Sunday, North Korea held a national meeting of state, party and military leaders in Pyongyang, vowing to fight US threats.

"The situation on the Korean peninsula has reached a very grave phase due to the Bush administration's hostile policy toward the DPRK (North Korea)," Yang Hyong Sop, vice-president of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly (parliament), said in a speech.

"If the US launches a war of aggression at any cost, persisting in its moves to destroy the DPRK (North Korea) with nukes while ignoring the DPRK's above-board and sincere efforts for the peaceful settlement of the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula, the army and people of the DPRK ... will mercilessly destroy the aggressors and its stronghold with crushing blows," he said.

He praised Kim for defending the country's sovereignty by "always reacting to the US hard-line policy with the toughest stand."

Hereditary dictator Kim has adopted the so-called "Songun", or military-first policy, as a ruling mantra since the nuclear crisis flared 16 months ago.

The Stalinist country has defended its nuclear programs as a self-defensive measure, fearing it could be the next target of a pre-emptive US attack after Iraq.

The North has refused to give up its nuclear threat unless it receives concessions from Washington, including a non-aggression pact.

Washington believes North Korea already has one or two crude nuclear bombs made from plutonium diverted from its nuclear complex at Yongbyon, 90 kilometres (50 miles) north of Pyongyang, before a 1994 nuclear freeze took effect.

The Stalinist state traditionally organizes cultural and sporting events to mark the birthday and distributes extra rations to ordinary Koreans who are urged to renew pledges of loyalty to their leader.

In a birthday editorial, Rodong Sinmun, the communist party mouthpiece, urged the people to safeguard "the supreme leader" with their lives, according to Yonhap news agency.

In recent years, however, festivities have been dampened by the country's chronic food shortages.

The UN World Food Program warned last week that four million North Koreans would be left without food unless urgent shipments are made by March.

After failures in its centralized economy and natural disasters, North Korea introduced limited economic reforms in July 2002, raising wages and freeing prices.

The reforms, however, sent prices soaring and led to high foreign exchange rates. The North's energy shortage deepened after Washington and its allies stopped an annual shipment of 500,000 tonnes of fuel oil in late 2002.

The famine-hit country has relied on outside aid especially from South Korea to feed its 22 million people.

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