By Yoo Choonsik and Jon Herskovitz
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea said on Friday it had already given an account of its nuclear arms programme as required under an international disarmament deal, while separately threatening to boost its "war deterrent".
The U.S. State Department said a few days ago that North Korea had not meet an end of 2007 deadline to provide a full list of its nuclear arms programme, as it was obliged to by the deal it struck with regional powers earlier in the year.
"We have already drawn up a nuclear report in November and have notified the United States of it," the North's KCNA news agency quoted an unnamed Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying.
"As far as the nuclear declaration on which wrong opinion is being built up by some quarters is concerned, the DPRK (North Korea) has done what it should do."
Under the deal, the destitute North was also required to begin taking apart its nuclear plant that produces plutonium for weapons in exchange for 1 million tonnes of heavy fuel oil or equivalent aid and a removal from a U.S. terrorism blacklist.
U.S. and South Korea said the North has been cooperating in taking apart its Soviet-era reactor, a plant the produces nuclear fuel and another that turns spent fuel into plutonium.
The North said it had slowed the pace of disablement because aid was not coming as quickly as it expected. But its spokesman thought the nuclear deal "can be smoothly implemented".
The North was called on to answer U.S. suspicions of having a secret programme to enrich uranium for weapons.
"When the U.S. side raised 'suspicion' about uranium enrichment, the DPRK (North Korea) allowed it to visit some military facilities in which imported aluminium tubes were used as an exception and offered its samples ..., clarifying with sincerity that the controversial aluminium tubes had nothing to do with the uranium enrichment," the spokesman said.
North Korea blamed the United States for delaying the deal by not taking it off the terrorism list.
A separate North Korean state media report on Friday said: "(We) will further strengthen our war deterrent capabilities in response to U.S. attempts to initiate nuclear war."
The North, with one of the world's largest standing armies, usually threatens to bolster its deterrent, often taken to be a reference to its nuclear arsenal, when it feels international powers are not treating it properly.
Analysts do not expect the row over the nuclear declaration to scuttle the deal for now but said North Korea may eventually run out of breathing space if it does not provide an inventory of its nuclear arsenal that satisfies the United States.
The U.S. State Department said it was sending nuclear envoy Christopher Hill next week to Asia and Russia.
(Editing by Alex Richardson)
