North Korea calls Bush warmonger

SEOUL, South Korea -- In its first public reaction to being called part of an "axis of evil," North Korea on Friday said President Bush's pronouncement was little short of a declaration or war.

"The option to 'strike' impudently advocated by the U.S. is not its monopoly," a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said. North Korea, it said, "will never tolerate the U.S. reckless attempt to stifle the (North) by force of arms but mercilessly wipe out the aggressors."

The statement, carried by the North's official KCNA news agency and monitored in Seoul, was the regime's first since Bush's State of the Union speech Tuesday.

In the speech, Bush said North Korea, Iran and Iraq formed an "axis of evil," and that "the United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons."

"This is, in fact, little short of declaring a war against the DPRK," or the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the communist state's official name, said the North Korean spokesman, who was not identified by name.