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N.Korea warns of pre-emptive strike
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea may strike U.S. forces pre-emptively rather than wait for an American attack after a war with Iraq, a spokesman for the communist state has told the Guardian newspaper in Pyongyang. "The United States says that after Iraq, we are next", the Guardian website quoted Ri Pyong-gap, a North Korean Foreign Ministry deputy director, as saying on Wednesday amid rising tensions over a nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula. "But we have our own countermeasures. Pre-emptive attacks are not the exclusive right of the U.S," said Ri, according to the Guardian website. His reported remarks went further than numerous recent dire warnings issued by Pyongyang's state media. A Guardian correspondent, one of several British journalists admitted to secretive North Korea this month, quoted Ri as saying that the current nuclear stand-off was more dangerous than that a decade ago when Washington and Pyongyang nearly went to war. "The present situation can be called graver than it was in 1993. It will be touch and go," the daily quoted Ri as saying.

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