North Korea publicly acknowledged Thursday for the first time that it has nuclear weapons and said it won't return to six-nation talks aimed at getting it to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

The statement from the reclusive, Stalinist state dramatically raised the stakes in the two-year-old nuclear confrontation and posed a grave challenge to President Bush, who started his second term with a vow to end North Korea's nuclear weapons programs through multilateral talks.

"We ... have manufactured nukes for self-defense to cope with the Bush administration's ever more undisguised policy to isolate and stifle the (North)," the North Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency.

Posted by: Jonathan Singer / 12:13 AM | Basie! Home