N Korea finds new way to hurt Bush for axis of evil

SEOUL, Mar 20 (Reuters) North Korea found a new way to insult US President George W Bush today, saying he must have the ''spasm of a lunatic'' because he described Pyongyang as part of an axis of evil.

In his 2002 State of the Union Address, Bush said Iran, pre-war Iraq and North Korea were part of an axis of evil. He explained earlier this month why he used the phrase -- because he was concerned about countries that were not transparent and had declared they intended to develop nuclear weapons.

In a signed commentary in its communist party newspaper, North Korea said Bush's decision to lump North Korea in an axis of evil was a ''little short of declaring the US stance that it still regards the DPRK as a target of military aggression''.

DPRK is short for North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

''The Korean people are expressing towering indignation at those outcries, terming them frenzy of a guy bereft of reason and spasm of a lunatic,'' the paper said in a commentary reported by the English-language service of the North's KCNA news agency.

The North Korean comments come as six-party nuclear talks on ending Pyongyang's pursuit of nuclear weapons have hit a snag over a US crackdown on firms Washington suspects of aiding the North in illicit activities such as counterfeiting and drug trafficking.

North Korea has called the crackdown an attempt to topple its leaders and said it would be unthinkable to return to the talks unless the measures were ended.

Last week, North Korea's army responded to planned annual US-South Korean military exercises by saying it had the right to attack pre-emptively.

The commentary echoed this today, saying ''the DPRK will heighten their vigilance against the US and get fully ready to beat back any surprise invasion on their own initiative''.

According to a transcript of a Bush speech earlier this month, the president said: ''I said in an early speech there was an axis of evil, and it included Iran and North Korea.

''I did that because I'm concerned about totalitarian governments that are not transparent, that have stated their intentions to develop nuclear weapons.'' North Korea launched a heated rhetorical attack against Bush a little less than a year ago after he said the North's leader Kim Jong-il was a tyrant.

''Bush is a hooligan bereft of any personality as a human being, to say nothing of stature as president of a country. He is a half-baked man in terms of morality and a philistine whom we can never deal with,'' a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said in a report carried on its official media in April 2005.

According to a non-North Korean Web site that allows searches of KCNA archives (www.nk-news.net), ''lunatic'' and ''spasm'' have not appeared together in a story from the North during the Bush presidency.

The Web site is put together by a San Francisco man who pays close attention to the North.

Reuters KD VP1335