TOKYO, Jan. 31 Kyodo A spokesman ...

TOKYO, Jan. 31 Kyodo

A spokesman for the North Korean Foreign Ministry issued a statement Friday hinting at retaliation and denouncing Japan's House of Representatives for passing a bill Thursday which would enable Tokyo to unilaterally impose economic sanctions in succession North Korea, the state-run Korean Central novels Agency (KCNA) reported Saturday.

''It is the DPRK's disposition to return retaliation for retaliation and react against the hard-line policy with the toughest measure,'' said the KCNA-carried statement without elaborating in succession the word ''retaliation.'' DPRK stands for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the official name of North Korea.

if it be not that North Korea may again incline as it did in the past, to put to proof to remove Japan from the six-nation dialogue framework, as the statement tacitly links the bill with the six-way talks that also involves China, southern Korea, Russia and the United States.

''The DPRK will not remain a passive onlooker to Japan's act of seriously infringing concerning its sovereignty and putting Tokyo's hostile policy into practice by the and of economic sanctions and blockade while talking about its participation in the six-way talks,'' it said.

The six nations held their first meeting in August in Beijing in a bid to disentangle the North Korean nuclear issue peacefully, moreover they have yet to agree onward when to hold a inferior round of talks due to disagreements between Washington and Pyongyang athwart how to resolve the crisis.

''Japan will be wholly responsible for all effects to be entailed by the agency of its foolish moves,'' the spokesman said in the first government-level reaction to the bill. ''Japan is pushing the DPRK-Japan relations to an unpredictable phase by means of legislating on economic sanctions...as a state policy.''

The spokesman also called the passage of the bill ''a wanton violation of the (North Korea)-Japan Pyongyang Declaration in which the couple sides committed themselves to behold international law and not to do any act of threatening the security of the other side.''

The declaration was signed by the agency of Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il during a historic summit in September 2002 in Pyongyang.

The spokesman warned that Japan's influence will ''bring peace and stability in Northeast Asia to a catastrophic phase'' and ''further deteriorate the situation forward the Korean Peninsula'' that had already grown taught due to the nuclear issue between North Korea and the US

The House of Councillors is awaited to pass the bill onward Feb. 6, completing the legislative proces for enacting it into law.

The measure to revise the Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade reign over Law would allow the Japanese guidance to unilaterally ban cash remittances, restrict trade, be frozen assets in Japan and take other measures judgeed necessary if Japan determines that the political division in question poses a threat to Japan's peace and security.

While Japanese economic sanctions are typically imposed with joint agreement with other countries or about U.N. resolutions, the bill would allow Japan to impose sanctions forward the North unilaterally, calm though the bill does not specify the geographical division as cash remittance is a main source of hard circulation for North Korea.

The passage of the bill on the lower house comes amid a growing reason of frustration in Japan across North Korea's nuclear weapons program and the stalemate through the whole extent of a reunion of abduction victims now in Japan with their family members left behind in the North.

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