But some experts say North Korea could further raise the stakes in the 28-month-long nuclear standoff with the United States and caution against optimistic views on the North's nuclear ambitions.

North Korea stunned the world last week by declaring it has manufactured nuclear weapons and was pulling indefinitely out of the six-nation talks on its nuclear programs. The Stalinist nation further ratcheted up its nuclear threat this week, pledging to use nuclear bombs to counter any U.S. nuclear strike.

"North Korea is now playing a high-risk, high-return gamble," said Nam Joo-hong, ! a strategy expert at Kyonggi University in Seoul.

"If North Korea wins the dangerous game, it will help boost survivability of the country and ensure stability of the North Korean regime," he said. "If not, however, North Korea would suffer unprecedented troubles," Nam said, adding North Korea has already crossed the Rubicon.

South Korean government officials, who are desperately seeking a diplomatic resolution of the nuclear dispute, also agree on the opinion that the North's nuclear brinkmanship could determine the fate of the communist regime.

They say the multilateral talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons programs could resume sooner or later unless North Korea takes further steps toward weapons of mass destruction.

"The United States and other related nations are stepping up diplomatic efforts to press North Korea to return to the negotiating table," a senior government official told United Pr! ess International. "The North's declaration of nuclear weapons possession seemed largely aimed at testing a U.S. response ahead of the resumption of the six-nation talks," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"Pyongyang achieved its initial goal of drawing U.S. attention focused on Iran's nuclear programs, regardless whether Washington believe in nuclear weapons in North Korea," the official said, predicting Pyongyang would return to negotiations "when an appropriate time comes."

But unless the United States or North Korea comes up with new proposals and the both reach a compromise, the six-nation talks would further stall even though they resume, officials and analysts say.

The United States and North Korea have held three rounds of the six-way talks that also involved Japan, China, Russia and South Korea since 2003, but no significant progress has been made, with suspicions that North Korea has stalled nego! tiations to buy time to develop atomic bombs.

The new round of nuclear row erupted in 2002, when U.S. officials accused North Korea of admitting to pushing a clandestine uranium-based arms program, in addition to its known plutonium-based one, in violation of a 1994 nuclear freeze accord.

Prof. Nam said the current nuclear standoff is more serious than the 1993 crisis because North Korea sparked the new crisis with the declaration of nuclear weapons possession, considered as a fait accompli.

Officials and analysts, including Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Tae-shik, said the situation could turn much serious if North Korea takes further steps, such as extracting additional plutonium from spent fuel rods from a 5-megawatt nuclear reactor it reactivated last year, or transferring nuclear material to other countries, Lee said.

North Korea said last summer that it had completed reprocessing 8,000 spent fu! el rods from the reactor, a process outside experts said could give the country enough plutonium to make several atomic bombs.

North Korea also could test-fire ballistic missiles capable of loading nuclear warheads. In 1998, North Korea launched a long-range Taepodong-I ballistic missile that flew over Japan and landed into the Pacific Ocean.

The communist state is now believed to be developing longer-range missiles that could strike western parts of the United States, such as Alaska and Hawaii.

South Korea's Defense Ministry and the intelligence agency estimates that North Korea's technology has yet to make its bombs light enough to be carried on its missiles. "In order to put a nuclear bomb on a missile, they should make it weigh less than 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds), but we don't think North Korea has acquired such technology," said an official at the National Intelligence Agency.

But U.S. CIA D! irector Porter Goss said on Wednesday that North Korea could test-fire an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to the United States "at any time." He also said North Korea may have enough plutonium for more than two nuclear bombs, more than in the previous U.S. assessment, and probably has chemical and biological weapons "ready to use."

Seoul's largest newspaper, Chosun Ilbo, cited government sources, confirmed this saying North Korea has developed a new type of Scud missile with improved precision and enough range to hit anywhere in South Korea and most of Japan.

Defense Minister Yoon Kwang-ung admitted that South Korea has bolstered its defense readiness for possible nuclear strikes by North Korea over the past few years.

Kim Tae-woo, a nuclear strategy analyst at the Korea Institute for Defense Analysis, called for more concerted efforts to force North Korea to abandon its nuc! lear programs,

"Time is not on the side of the United States and South Korea because North Korea may attempt to buy more time to make atomic bombs," he said. "International efforts should be focused on freezing the North's nuclear activities as the first step to dismantle the programs eventually," he said.

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