Cheney had called Kim an "irresponsible" leader who did not care for his people and ran a police state, drawing a strong rebuke Thursday from Pyongyang, which slammed the US vice president as a "blood-thirsty beast."

"We are going to call it the way it is," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters as he backed Cheney's verbal broadside made in an interview on CNN's "Larry King Live" program on Monday.

Charles Pritchard, the special envoy for talks with North Korea during president Bill Clinton's second term in office, said Cheney's volley was "deliberate".

"It certainly had an effect that many in the Bush administration would like to see and that is the cooling of the possibility of the North Koreans returning to the six party talks," he said.

"The chances of the North Koreans coming back to the talks anytime soon are now less likely," Pritchard said.

He noted that Cheney's criticism of the North Korean leader came just two weeks after US special envoy Joseph deTrani held a rare direct meeting with North Koreans asking them to return to the six-party meeting.

North Korea has boycotted the talks - also involving China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States - since the last round a year ago due to what it called hostile US policy.

"The stated policy of the Bush administration is to bring North Korea back to talks and precisely while the North Koreans were considering this, given the message by ambassador Joseph deTrani on May 13, the Vice-President has essentially trumped that message and it had caused the North Koreans predictably to react the way that they have," Pritchard said.

But North Asia analyst Balbina Hwang of the conservative Heritage Foundation said the White House defense of Cheney did not reinforce any notion that the United States had given up hopes on the six-party talks.

"Cheney's comments were not something new and does not indicate any shift in policy," she said. "And I do not think strong statements labeling North Korea for what it is, is what is preventing North Korea from coming back to the table."

"They do not want to return to the talks because they want to continue with their nuclear weapons program," Hwang said.

McClellan said Pyongyang's harsh words for Cheney were "more of the same kind of bluster we hear from North Korea from time to time."

"All of the parties are saying to North Korea that it needs to abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions. We all share the goal of a nuclear-free (Korean) peninsula. North Korea is the one that must make a strategic decision" if it wants to have better relations with the international community, said McClellan.

"They may make provocative statements, but they will only further isolate themselves from the international community. We've made very clear that we are committed to the six-party talks," he said.

Pyongyang relaunched its nuclear arms program in violation of a 1994 accord. Washington insists Pyongyang has several atomic bombs in its arsenal.

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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