North Korea tries to avert crisis over nuclear claims

North Korea moved to head off a fresh crisis over its weapons programme yesterday amid international alarm and debate over one syllable, which marks the difference between claiming to have nuclear bombs and merely expressing the right to acquire them.

For more than 24 hours, experts across the globe – from its uneasy neighbours in Seoul and Tokyo to analysts at the BBC's monitoring station at Caversham and in the State Department in Washington – focused their attention on a phrase uttered by a news announcer on state-run Pyongyang Radio on Sunday.

Did the announcer say North Korea had "come to have" nuclear weapons, which would have been the first explicit claim of this kind from the Communist regime, worsening regional tensions and raising the stakes in its stand-off with the United States? Or did he only say that it "was entitled to" have these weapons? Experts said the difference lies in a vowel. Was it kajige tui-o-itta or kajige tui-otta? The BBC – which devoted headlines over the weekend to North Korea's claim to have nuclear bombs – said yesterday that four members of its monitoring unit had double-checked the disputed passage and were confident that its version was right.

Analysts and officials in South Korea and Japan were not so sure and suggested listeners might have been confused by the northern accent of the Pyongyang announcer.

The North Korean authorities intervened yesterday. A new announcement, from a different state-run radio station – Korean Central Broadcasting Station (KCBS) – said North Korea was "entitled" to have nuclear arms to "safeguard [its] sovereignty and right to exist", a revision likely to ease some of the world's concerns.

North Korea was repeating a position it has taken for weeks, and returning to its ambiguity on whether it has nuclear weapons, although the CIA has long believed it has.

Pyongyang argues that it is entitled to have nuclear weapons in the face of President George Bush's belligerent administration, which includes it in the "axis of evil" with Iran and Iraq, and which is willing to make pre-emptive military strikes against its enemies.

The latest flare-up came amid a blast of rhetoric from North Korea, which is locked in an argument with Washington over its nuclear programme. Last week, America said it would stop fuel oil aid to North Korea as a penalty for breaking a 1994 non-proliferation agreement.

American officials said last month that Pyongyang had admitted it was still developing nuclear arms. The admission came after Washington presented North Korea with evidence that it had a programme for enriching uranium.

The Americans said it was violating the 1994 accord under which it was to freeze its nuclear weapons programme in return for US-funded supplies of fuel oil and two light-water reactors. The construction of the light-water reactors is far behind schedule.

Tempers frayed still further in the region yesterday when North Korea threatened to resume flight tests of ballistic missiles, saying it might end a three-year-old test moratorium if Tokyo develops a missile defence shield with the US.

The United Nations World Food Programme visited Seoul yesterday and appealed for help to make up a shortfall of 130,000 tons of grain, which endangers 6.4 million North Koreans who have been fed by the UN in recent years.