North Korea on Tuesday accused Japan of trying to sabotage this week's six-party nuclear talks in Beijing and said it does not need the aid which Tokyo has pledged to withhold, state media reported.
The comments carried by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) came a day after North Korea's chief delegate in Beijing renewed a call for Japan to be excluded from the six-nation negotiations.
The forum, on scrapping the North's nuclear programme in exchange for economic and diplomatic benefits, also aims to lay the foundations for a permanent peace in Northeast Asia.
It groups the two Koreas, the United States, host China, Japan and Russia.
But rare one-on-one talks between North Korea and Japan broke down in acrimony earlier this month in Vietnam, after Tokyo pressed Pyonyang for answers about Japanese abducted by the communist state during the Cold War.
Until the kidnapping issue is settled, Japan refuses to help fund a February 13 agreement under which North Korea will receive badly needed economic aid in return for disabling it's nuclear programmes.
The breakdown of the Hanoi talks "is an inevitable product of the deliberate moves of the present ruling quarters and the right-wing forces of Japan who do not want the denulearisation of the Korean peninsula and the normalisation of the bilateral relations," said KCNA.
{{/usCountry}}The breakdown of the Hanoi talks "is an inevitable product of the deliberate moves of the present ruling quarters and the right-wing forces of Japan who do not want the denulearisation of the Korean peninsula and the normalisation of the bilateral relations," said KCNA.
{{/usCountry}}The state news agency said North Korea "has never asked Japan for any assistance and it has no idea of getting any help from it, either.