"The US intention to bring up the nuclear issue on the peninsula for discussion at the United Nations at any cost is a grave criminal act to hamstring all the efforts of the DPRK for dialogue," the official KCNA news agency said.

"Any move to discuss the nuclear issue at the UN Security Council is little short of a prelude to a war," KCNA said.

It said the resumption of talks depended entirely on whether Washington dropped what Pyongyang calls its hostile policy toward the North.

North Korea and the United States said on Friday they had agreed to hold six-way talks on the crisis over Pyongyang's nuclear intentions. China, Japan, Russia and South Korea will also attend.

But rhetoric from Washington and Pyongyang has been at a higher pitch than usual in recent days.

Undersecretary of State John Bolton, widely seen as a Bush administration "hawk" on North Korea, said earlier this week the UN Security Council needed to take "appropriate and timely action" to send a signal to the world it took the North Korean crisis seriously.

KCNA did not refer to comments by Bolton that described life in the reclusive country as a "hellish nightmare."

Bolton said North Korean leader Kim Jong-il was living like royalty while keeping hundreds of thousands of his people locked in prison camps, with millions more mired in poverty.

The crisis began last October when Washington said Pyongyang had said it had a covert nuclear program.

AP adds: North Korea might consider freezing its nuclear program if multilateral talks go well and it receives assurances from the United States that it will not be attacked, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said late Friday.

He called for the talks on North Korea's nuclear program to get under way soon.

Washington had long pushed for multilateral talks on the international standoff over North Korean's nuclear program. After months of insisting on bilateral talks, the North agreed Thursday to six-way discussions.