North Korea is unlikely to give up its nuclear weapons in the foreseeable future despite the upcoming talks with Washington, a former senior US diplomat who recently visited Pyongyang said Monday.

David Straub, once head of the State Department's Korea desk, gave his views as Washington prepares to send an envoy to the North for discussions on reviving the stalled six-nation nuclear disarmament talks.

"I see no indication that North Korea, in the foreseeable future, is prepared to give up its nuclear weapons programmes on terms that the US will find politically acceptable," Straub told a Seoul seminar, according to Yonhap news agency.

People no longer trust Congress, the President, the courts, the media, corporations, political parties, and other institutions of society. People even doubt science and medicine.

In a letter to the head of the UN Security Council, North Korea said it was "prepared for both dialogue and sanctions," but warned that if sanctions stayed in place, it would "respond with bolstering our nuclear deterrence."

The United States and South Korea on Saturday held top-level talks to discuss ways to press North Korea to return to disarmament talks, a day after the communist state's renewed nuclear sabre-rattling.

In a defiant response to tougher UN sanctions imposed after the nuclear test, North Korea said Friday it was building more plutonium-based atomic weapons and had made progress on enriching uranium.

The United States on Friday vowed to keep up its tough sanctions regime on North Korea after Pyongyang said it had reached the final stage of enriching uranium.

"We continue to be committed to ensuring that North Korea upholds its international obligations and we continue to strongly implement the sanctions that were approved," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

North Korea said Friday it has entered the final phase of uranium enrichment for nuclear weapons and is also building more bombs with spent reactor fuel rods.

After the United Nations imposed tougher sanctions in June following its May 25 nuclear test, the North vowed to start such a programme and to extract plutonium from fuel rods.

The United Arab Emirates has seized a ship illegally carrying embargoed North Korean weapons bound for Iran, diplomatic sources at the UN have said.

The UK-based Financial Times reported earlier on Friday that the ship was seized "some weeks ago".

One thing is for sure: The US gave NK some significant concession in return for the release of the reporters. My best guess would be that it involved loosening the financial and banking sanctions imposed on NK because these could be undone without the rest of the world knowing.

The reason for all the denials and secrecy is that Obama has made a big issue of the fact that the former US secret policy of rewarding NK for its continual violation of agreements would stop with his administration--though it clearly hasn't. So the administration has to go to extensive lengths to avoid the appearance of being permissive with NK.

Former US president George W. Bush said Saturday the five nations involved in nuclear disarmament talks with North Korea must send a unified warning against Pyongyang's continued defiance.

Former US president Bill Clinton arrived in North Korea on Tuesday on a surprise mission to free two jailed US journalists, in what was the highest-profile visit by an American to Pyongyang for nearly a decade.

“Our interest is the successful completion of this issue and to confirm the safe return of the two journalists,” a US official travelling separately with the ex-president’s wife, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, told reporters.

The latest US missile defence test, conducted last night in Hawaii waters, was deemed a success as tensions continue with North Korea over that country's missile programme.

There had been speculation North Korea would launch a missile toward Hawaii - about 4,500 miles away - to coincide with the July 4 Independence Day holiday in the US.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday that North Korea had "no friends left" to defend it from nuclear sanctions, triggering vitriolic defiance from the Stalinist regime.

Pyongyang hurled invective at "schoolgirl" Clinton and declared disarmament talks dead, as she told Asia's largest security forum that international efforts to squeeze the North over its atomic programme were paying off.

Fears about military cooperation between the two isolated states escalated after a US Navy destroyer last month began tracking a suspect North Korean ship that was reportedly heading for Myanmar

US officials said a key thrust of Clinton's debut at the forum would be to crank up pressure on North Korea to return to multilateral nuclear disarmament talks after its recent missile and nuclear weapons tests.

Bkis Security has just disclosed analysis showing that 166,908 botted PCs from 74 countries were used in the attacks. Commands were routed through eight control servers, tied into a master server located in the United Kingdom and running the Windows Server 2003 operating system, says Bkis research director Nguyen Minh Duc.

The countries include South Korea, the United States, Japan and Guatemala, Chung Chin-sup, a member of the parliamentary intelligence committee, told reporters.

But the spy agency cautioned it was too early to conclude that North Korea was responsible as the investigations were still under way, according to Park Young-sun, another member of the intelligence committee.

In a reversal of the usual pattern, South Korea is now warning North Korea that it is developing a first-strike capacity against the communist country.

A South Korean defense reform plan, reported on by the Korea Times, describes the country’s plans for a defense network that would link surveillance satellites, high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft and early-warning radar in an effort “to remove North Korea’s asymmetrical military threat of nuclear and missile programs.”

At the time of the resolution, which the White House touted as a “strong and united international response,” many analysts had noted that the provisions were ultimately unenforceable. It seems that in its pursuit of the ship based on its suspicions, the US has ultimately proved that analysis accurate.

The South Korean military plans to speed up efforts to deploy ground, air and naval weapons systems for use in strikes against key facilities in North Korea in the event of war, the Ministry of National Defense said Friday.

The updated plan is focused on securing independent capabilities to remove North Korea's asymmetrical military threat of nuclear and missile programs by deploying sophisticated surveillance, reconnaissance and striking assets.

In the case of an emergency, the military could conduct pre-emptive strikes against nuclear and missile facilities, an official at the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said

Gen. Walter "Skip" Sharp said that means the South Korean military should prepare by conducting as much realistic training as possible – likely with the aid of the US.

"I believe we will face IEDs and insurgent forces in addition to large conventional attacks," said General Sharp in remarks there Tuesday. "We must immediately begin preparing both ROK [Republic of Korea] and US forces to improve our capabilities in these areas." Sharp didn't mention the "thinking enemy" by name until the end of his prepared remarks. "North Korea is watching and I am convinced that discussing and demonstrating the strength, capabilities, and leadership of the ROK army is the best deterrence."

The United States needs to "figure out some way" to board and search North Korean ships suspected of carrying weapons or nuclear know-how, a senior US lawmaker said Thursday.

North Korea accused Washington of seeking to "provoke a second Korean War" as the regime prepared to hold maritime military exercises off the eastern coast. U.S. and regional authorities were watching closely for signs that North Korea might fire short- or mid-range missiles during the June 25 to July 10 timeframe cited in a no-sail ban for military drills sent to Japan's Coast Guard.

An impending missile test threatened by North Korea is expected to launch short- to medium-range missiles rather than a long-range missile fired in the direction of Hawaii, according to U.S. intelligence reports.

They say that history repeats, and therein lies a motive for the US Government to want a new war. after all, the US Government got out of the depression that resulted from the crash of 1904 by getting into WWI. The US Government got out of the depression that resulted from the crash of 1929 by getting into WWII. Now we are seeing the aftermath of the crash of 2008. If you see an obvious pattern here, rest assured, so does the US Government, which has a long history of using wars to correct, or at least to distract the people from , economic turmoil. From the point of view of Washington DC, it is far better that the taxpayers believe Iran and North Korea are the threat to our way of life, rather than Wall Street and of course, Washington DC itself.

In a first official response to last week’s US-South Korean summit, the state-run weekly Tongil Sinbo said in its Saturday edition Obama and South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak “are trying to ignite a nuclear war”.

After being victims of multiple false and propagandistic media campaigns one would think that we would be able to read between the lines when our mainstream media sources act in lockstep with one another in marketing the agenda du jour.

Have we already forgotten the “flowers and candy” which the gracious Iraqi people were going to greet us with? You know, as “Liberators.” The weapons of mass destruction? The fear campaign waged against us to surrender our national treasure to a few Wall Street firms? When the mainstream media moves together in uniform, repeating the same talking points, it’s time to get suspicious, not complacent.

First came the attempted launch in April. Then, last month, Pyongyang detonated a test nuclear device, which may or may not have worked as planned. Now the Norks are threatening to launch another Taepodong-2 missile, with a 4,000-mile range, towards Hawaii — and Gates is pulling out all the stops, to prepare for an intercept.

That means sending Army Terminal High-Altitude Air Defense missile systems, still in development, to the islands, and deploying the SBX radar. Joint Chiefs vice chairman General James Cartwright said he was “90-plus percent” sure the U.S. could intercept a Nork missile, in the unlikely event it overflew U.S. territory.

Apart from anger at Pyongyang's disobedience - and fears that its nuke program could endanger China - Beijing is worried that the latest development would hand a pretext to countries including South Korea and Japan to procure or produce more sophisticated weapons. Former senior director of the US National Security Council Dennis Wilder pointed out that Kim's nuclearization gambit could be "a game-changer in Northeast Asia security dynamics".

Mr. Gates told reporters that the U.S. is positioning a sophisticated floating radar array in the ocean around Hawaii to track an incoming missile. The U.S. is also deploying missile-defense weapons to Hawaii that would theoretically be capable of shooting down a North Korean missile, should such an order be given, he said.

North Korea indicated during the second government-level talks Friday that it was willing to completely lift restrictions on inter-Korean boarder-crossings imposed last December in a bid to help solve problems at companies operating in the Gaeseong Industrial Complex.

The U.S. military is planning to intercept a flagged North Korean ship suspected of proliferating weapons material in violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution passed last Friday, FOX News has learned.

The USS John McCain, a navy destroyer, will intercept the ship Kang Nam as soon as it leaves the vicinity off the coast of China, according to a senior U.S. defense official. The order to inderdict has not been given yet, but the ship is getting into position.

Russian military says its reconnaissance units are relaying 'relevant information' on potential missile launches by North Korea.

On Friday, a senior Russian military official said the country's armed forces had alerted its entire surveillance squad to the possibility of a Pyongyang-led ballistic missile launch, Interfax reported.

NORTH and South Korea have resumed talks on the fate of their last remaining reconciliation project as the US moved to defend itself in the event of a North Korean missile strike on Hawaii.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he has ordered the U.S. military to take defensive measures should North Korea attempt to fire a ballistic missile toward Hawaii.

North Korea has accused the South of escalating tensions on the Korean peninsula to the brink of war.

Rodong Sinmun, the official daily of the North’s ruling communist party, said the United States and its allies had launched a smear campaign against Pyongyang at the UN Security Council and drastically raised the danger of invading the North.

“The situation on the Korean peninsula is more tense than ever,” the daily said.

The U.S. military is tracking a flagged North Korean ship suspected of proliferating weapons material in violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution passed last Friday, FOX News has learned.

The ship, Kang Nam, left a port in North Korea Wednesday and could be carrying weaponry, missile parts or nuclear materials.

US excoriates North Korea's nuclear defiance, urges Pyongyang to return to negotiating table.

The Obama administration wants help from U.S. allies and possibly China to cut off North Korean shipments that may be carrying nuclear technology or other weapons.

While the newspaper speculated the Taepodong-2 could fly over Japan and toward Hawaii, it said the missile would not be able to hit Hawaii's main islands, which are about 4,500 miles (7,200 kilometers) from the Korean peninsula.

"North Korea has abandoned its own commitments and violated international law," Obama said, alongside Lee during his first appearance in the White House Rose Garden with a foreign leader.

"Its nuclear and ballistic missile programs pose a grave threat to (the) peace and security of Asia and to the world."

"Under the present situation where the Korean People's Army (KPA) is technically at war with the U.S. imperialists, and as the Armistice Agreement has lost its legal binding force, the KPA will promptly exercise the right to a pre-emptive strike to beat back the enemies' slightest provocation," Pak said.

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak is traveling to the United States for talks with President Obama, as tensions on the Korean Peninsula reached a new high today. North Korea has responded to US plans to stop its ships under a new UN resolution by threatening war in that event. The nation also appears to be raising the specter of a nuclear war.

"It has become an absolutely impossible option for the DPRK (North Korea) to even think about giving up its nuclear weapons," the statement said, adding it would consider any blockade as an act of war and would retaliate militarily.

China warned about the dangers involved in inspecting North Korean cargo under United Nations Security Council sanctions approved yesterday, saying countries intercepting vessels should avoid armed action.

Tough new UN sanctions against North Korea will have "teeth to bite" which could prompt Pyongyang to react with a "further provocation," the US envoy to the United Nations Susan Rice warned Friday.

As worked out by the five veto-empowered U.N. Security Council members — the U.S., China, Russia, France and Britain — plus two of North Korea's most concerned neighbors, Japan and South Korea, the new sanctions would ban North Korea from exporting all weapons, including ballistic missiles.

What could be different this time are provisions for inspection of vessels on the high seas or in seaports if the ships are reasonably suspected of carrying prohibited arms, including nuclear- and missile-related items.

The White House has said it has come to expect North Korea to act "recklessly" amid media reports Pyongyang was preparing for a third nuclear test in response to threats of UN sanctions.

One of Obama?s chief strategists told the New York Times that the US president had no intention of offering North Korea further incentives to adhere to previous deals to dismantle its nuclear facilities.

The 2007 agreement broke down last December. North Korea had kept its side of the bargain, by shutting down and beginning to dismantle its nuclear reactor and reprocessing plant at Yongbyon. The Bush administration, however, only reluctantly took the first step of taking North Korea off the US State Department?s list of state sponsors of terrorism and continued to insist on new verification measures before further steps were taken.

The North has accepted a proposal for working-level talks on June 11 at the Kaesong joint industrial complex just north of the border, according to South Korea’s unification ministry.

The two sides held their first government-level talks in more than a year on April 21. The North demanded pay rises for its workers and land-use fees at the Seoul-funded estate.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said today that the US “will not stand idly by as North Korea builds the capability to wreak destruction on any target in the region — or on us.” He also urged a unified international response to what he characterized as an unhelpful series of tests.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned North Korea on Saturday that the United States would respond quickly if moves by the communist government threaten America or its Asian allies.

"We will not stand idly by as North Korea builds the capability to wreak destruction on any target in the region — or on us," Gates told an annual international meeting of defense and security officials from Asia and the Pacific Rim.

U.S. ground-based interceptor rockets would “likely” knock out a long-range North Korean missile before it could reach the American mainland, the Pentagon’s independent testing official said today.

“I believe we have a reasonable chance” of an intercept, Charles McQueary, director of operational test and evaluation, said in an interview as North Korea defied international condemnation of a nuclear test with another short-range missile launch.

Initial U.S. testing to determine whether North Korea fired a nuclear device on Monday proved "inconclusive," said a U.S. official on Friday.

"The first test results came in inconclusive. They did not find anything that could confirm a nuclear device was detonated," said the U.S. official, who declined to be named.

The most common analysis is that it is an effort to capture the attention of the Government that matters most to North Korea — the US Administration of Barack Obama. Mr Kim wants one thing more than any other — a comprehensive peace treaty, with guarantees of North Korean security, in place of the flimsy armistice, and all underwritten by the US. It is towards this end that all his mischief-making, and his nuclear programme, are bent; and he will have eagerly noted Mr Obama’s inauguration promise to reach out a hand to America’s antagonists.

Today, as on many tragically similar occasions in recent years, I am in desperate need of Mrs. Comstock's skills. As Drudge falls to the repellent task of unforgivably enthusiastic war-mongering (hardly for the first and certainly not the last time), he repeats an equally repellent and unforgivable headline: "NKorea Threatens to Attack US, SKorean Warships." All that is omitted are the reasons for these threats, that is, the actions of the United States and South Korea to which North Korea is responding.

North Korea launched a tirade Wednesday against world powers threatening to punish it for conducting its second nuclear test, saying it is not afraid of sanctions and calling South Korea's decision to join an operation to prevent the spread of weapons a declaration of war.

The prospect of a naval clash also increased after Pyongyang threatened a military response to any attempt by US-led forces to intercept its vessels off the Korean peninsula's west coast.

South Korean and U.S. troops raised their alert Thursday to the highest level since 2006 after North Korea renounced its truce with the allied forces and threatened to strike any ships trying to intercept its vessels.

Sources close to MiNa claim the US Army has moved their alert level to Defcon 2. This was initiated by the alarming situation in North Korea. The US Army has over 35,000 troops stationed in South Korea, well within reach of North Korean conventional weapons.

We are witnessing the Washington gangsters construct yet another threat like Slobodan Milosevic, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, John Walker Lindh, Hamdi, Padilla, Sami Al-Arian, Hamas, Mahkmoud Ahmadinejad, and the hapless detainees demonized by the US Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld as “the 700 most dangerous terrorists on the face of the earth,” who were tortured for six years at Gitmo only to be quietly released. Just another mistake, sorry.

The military/security complex that rules America, together with the Israel Lobby and the financial banksters, needs a long list of dangerous enemies to keep the taxpayers’ money flowing into its coffers.

Russia is taking security measures as a precaution against the possibility tension over North Korea could escalate into nuclear war, news agencies quoted officials as saying on Wednesday.

Interfax quoted an unnamed security source as saying a stand-off triggered by Pyongyang's nuclear test on Monday could affect the security of Russia's far eastern regions, which border North Korea.

“Any tiny hostile acts against our republic, including the stopping and searching of our peaceful vessels… will face an immediate and strong military strike in response,” the North Korean statement said.

Clinton, Rumsfeld and Bush played key role in arming Stalinist state, CIA asset AQ Khan helped provide means for Stalinist state to build nuclear arsenal, with the protection of Uncle Sam

US President Barack Obama said the international community must act after North Korea's "reckless" nuclear and missile tests on Monday, as calls grew for tougher action against Pyongyang.

"North Korea's nuclear ballistic missile programs pose a great threat to the peace and security of the world and I strongly condemn their reckless action," Obama said ahead of a Memorial Day ceremony to honor war dead.

It is a shock that could have been predicted: former South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun's opting to avoid prosecutors' questions by ending his life today, off a rock edge near his southern village home. His friends and supporters are left grieving, and the public will grant commensurate pity to his memory--as is humane and to be expected. A self-taught attorney, specializing in human rights and public sympathy, he doubtless passed bearing one last smile--knowing the Ministry of Justice will now close the case of his family's bribery; he was crafty to the end. And citizens of South Korea are the poorer for their misplaced Confucian ideals.

The United States on Saturday blasted North Korea's decision to reactivate its nuclear program and called for the reclusive nation to return to international denuclearization talks.

While the North insists its satellite was placed in orbit and is beaming patriotic songs, South Korea, Japan and the US military say there is no sign of a satellite.

Experts say the rocket’s second and third stage failed to separate and that it fell in the Pacific short of the designated landing zone.