In a letter sent to the UN Security Council, which was meeting Wednesday to discuss North Korea, the groups pushed for a "strenghtened non-proliferation regime" and also urged the United States and other nuclear powers to "stop evading" their disarmament obligations.

"We fear that the US's 'preventative war' against Iraq has set a damaging precedent for response to crises involving states with suspected weapons of mass destruction capabilities," said John Loretz of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.

"We appeal to all UN Security Council members to engage in active diplomacy to strengthen the nuclear non-proliferation regime and avoid further war," Loretz said.

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UN nuclear inspectors, restarted its mothballed nuclear reactor at Yongbyon that can produce weapons grade plutonium, withdrawn from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and has test-launched a missile.

The NGOs called on North Korea to remain within the NPT and for the United States to "definitively" reject the use of military force to address the crisis.

"The dispute could be settled through bilateral talks ... supported by multilateral negotiations involving Security Council members and countries within Northeast Asia," the letter said.

SPACE.WIRE