The North's official Korean Central News Agency accused Japan of being emboldened by the US-led invasion of Iraq in its ambition to remilitarize.

"Japan should behave with discretion, clearly mindful that it is also within the striking range of the DPRK (North Korea)," KCNA said in a dispatch monitored here.

"Japan is turning to the right and is getting militarized at such a rapid tempo that the call for destroying the DPRK, a legitimate sovereign state, is heard in the Diet (Japanese parliament). This is a clear indication of the gravity of the situation.

"The Japanese reactionaries seem to have lost their reason under the impact of the Iraqi war launched by their master," KCNA said in a reference to the United States which Japan has backed over going to war.

Calls in Japan to contain North Korea amid the growing nuclear crisis served as a pretext for Japanese "reactionaries" to further their aim of reoccupying the Korean peninsula, KCNA alleged.

"An endless string of war outcries in Japan calling for containing the DPRK by force indicates what a dangerous phase the Japanese reactionaries' attempt to stage a comeback to Korea has reached.

"By counter-action in case of emergency they mean a contingency on the Korean peninsula, i.e. The second Korean war."

Japan ruled the Korean peninsula as a colony from 1910 until the end of World War II in 1945.

In 1998 Pyongyang test-fired a medium-range Taepodong ballistic missile that overflew Japan and splashed down in the Pacific.

North Korea is believed to have deployed some 100 Rodong-1 missiles with a range of 1,300 kilometres (805 miles), capable of striking any target in Japan.

Pyongyang's latest outburst came hours before the United Nations was due to intervene for the first time in the nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula.

The 15-member UN Security Council was due to convene later in the day in New York for a meeting that respresents a victory for US efforts to cast the deepening crisis as a challenge to the entire world community.

The United States has been pressing the United Nations to take up North Korea since October, when Washington said Pyongyang had admitted pursuing nuclear weapons despite a 1994 accord to freeze its nuclear program.

Since October, North Korea has expelled UN nuclear inspectors, restarted its mothballed nuclear reactor at Yongbyon that can produce weapons grade plutonium, withdrawn from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and test-launched missiles.

SPACE.WIRE