Seoul (AsiaNews/Agencies) - North Korea said Thursday it will not attend six-way talks aimed at ending its nuclear weapons program unless the United States drops its "hostile" policy toward the communist country. In the clearest mention yet, the North also confirmed that it has manufactured an undisclosed number of nuclear weapons to counter the U.S. policy.

"We are compelled to suspend our participation in the six-party talks for an indefinite period to cope with the grave situation created by the U.S.'s hostile policy toward the DPRK," the North's Foreign Ministry said in a statement. The DPRK, or the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, is North Korea's official name.

North Korea will boycott the meeting until "we have recognized that there is justification for us to attend the talks and there are ample conditions and an atmosphere to expect positive results from the talks," it said.

South Korea, the United States and three other countries - Japan, China and Russia  - are trying to persuade North Korea to resume the stalled negotiations. Three rounds of six-nation talks have been held since 2003 to help defuse tension over the North's nuclear program, but little progress has been made. A fourth-round meeting was scheduled to be held before the end of September last year, but North Korea boycotted it, citing Washington's hostile policy.

The North Korean Foreign Ministry said: "There is no justification for us to participate in the six-party talks, given that the (U.S. President George W.) Bush administration termed the DPRK, a dialogue partner, an 'outpost of tyranny,' putting into the shade the hostile policy," it said.

Pyongyang accused the U.S. of seeking a regime change in the country while talking about a "peaceful and diplomatic solution to the nuclear issue and the resumption of the six-party talks in a bid to mislead world public opinion."

In 2002 President George W. Bush  defined North Korea, together with Iraq and Iran, the "axis of evil". But in his State of the Union address on February 2, Bush did not have any hostile expression towards North Korea. He just said: "We are working closely with the governments in Asia to convince North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions".

According to the North Korean ministry the true intention of the second-term Bush administration is not only to further its policy to isolate and stifle the DPRK pursued by the first-term office but to escalate it. "This compels us to take a measure to bolster our nuclear weapons arsenal in order to protect the ideology, system, freedom and democracy chosen by its people," it said.

"We have manufactured nuclear weapons for self-defence to cope with the Bush administration's ever-more undisguised policy to isolate and stifle the DPRK," he said.

The nuclear row erupted in late 2002 when Washington claimed Pyongyang had a nuclear weapons development plan in violation of a bilateral 1994 accord.