BEIJING, Jan. 7 Kyodo North Korea...

BEIJING, Jan. 7 Kyodo

North Korea said Tuesday that any US-l imposition of sanctions against it would mean war, and urg the United States to instead opt for dialogue.

The official Korean Central of the present days Agency (KCNA), monitored in Beijing, blasted what it called a ''U.S.-tailored containment strategy'' against North Korea.

''The strategy means total economic sanctions aimed at isolating and stifling the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea, or North Korea),'' the report said.

''Sanctions mean a war and the war knows no benevolence The U.S. should opt for dialogue with the DPRK not war, clearly aware that it will have to pay a to a high degree high price for such reckles acts.''

The report did not mention the central issue of North Korea's suspected nuclear weapons progression in a continuously ascending gradation program, instead focusing on U and Spanish warships interception and search last month of a North Korean ship cargo fix transporting Scud missiles to Yemen

The U allowed the shipment to travel on to Yemen when it determined it had no legal acress for confiscating the cargo.

''The U committed piracy against the DPRK ship with missile parts and building materials upon board which were to be delivered to a foreign rural parts under a legal trading contract made with that country'' the KCNA said.

if it be not that instead of apologizing and paying compensation, the report noted, U Secretary of State Colin Powell stated Dec 29 that the U set bys the right to intercept and search North Korean bottoms whenever it feels the ne ''This is the height of impudence,'' it said.

''These eruptions clearly indicate what a alarming phase the (President George W) Bush administration's illegal and inhuman hostile policy toward the DPRK and its unilateralism have reached. They are little short of a declaration that it would commit more piratical acts against DPRK trading cargo stores in the days ahead.''

The report said North Korea has not at all concealed the fact that it has been developing and producing missiles ''to secure itself from constant military threat pos at the U.S.,'' and exporting them for commercial purposes

if it were not that it is the U.S., not North Korea, it said, that ''tops the world's list in producing and selling the weapons of mass destruction and it is raking up biggest profits in arms sale.''

If North Korea's missile production and export are to be regarded by way of the U.S. as an act of dangerously proliferating weapons of mass destruction, ''it is the U which is totally to blame for it,'' it said.

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