US troops should go under atomic deal - N. Korea

North Korea responded yesterday to US demands for it to dismantle its nuclear weapons programme, saying US forces should completely withdraw from the South.

The United States repeated at talks with the two Koreas, Russia, China and Japan last month in Beijing it wanted the "complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement" (CVID) of North Korea's nuclear programme.

In a commentary, the North's main newspaper Rodong Sinmum said the US demand was a ploy to try to strangle North Korea economically and snoop around under the guise of inspections.

"Now that the US is persistently forcing the complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement of nuclear programme upon the DPRK, turning aside from the latter's elastic and most magnanimous proposal, the DPRK cannot but demand the US completely withdraw its troops from South korea in a verifiable way," Rodong Sinmun said. The initials DPRK stand for the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

North Korea's official KCNA news agency carried the newspaper's commentary, which also said Washington should guarantee a peace treaty and normalise relations.

The United States has 37,000 troops stationed in the South to deter the North from attacking, as it did in 1950 at the start of the three-year Korean War. That conflict ended in a truce, not a full peace.

The daily said the US insistence on complete dismantling of the North's nuclear deterrent was "brigandish logic" and intended to "exterminate" Pyongyang's communist system.

Rodong Sinmun said Pyongyang was prepared to negotiate about its nuclear deterrent but not to give up what it described as its peaceful nuclear activity.