SEOUL -- North Korea has for the first time indicated that its membership of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) could be the next victim of a deepening crisis over its nuclear weapons ambitions.

In a statement late Sunday, North Korea's Foreign Ministry blamed the United States for the collapse of the 1994 agreed framework accord under which Pyongyang agreed to freeze its nuclear program and to stay within the nuclear safeguard accord.

The Agreed Framework (AF) helped North Korea find itself "in a special status" where its withdrawal from the NPT was suspended until the construction of light-water nuclear reactors by a U.S.-led consortium, the statement said.

"And the U.S. began ditching even the AF, thus putting this special status of ours in peril," it said.

North Korea announced its withdrawal from the NPT in March 1993, triggering a nuclear crisis that brought the Korean peninsula to the brink of war.

Three months later the Stalinist country suspended its threatened NPT withdrawal after the United States agreed to start dialogue on improving ties with North Korea. The statement also blasted Washington for trying to destroy North Korea "with nuclear weapons, gripped by the Cold War way of thinking, going against the basic trend of the new century heading for reconciliation and peace."

"We have been left with no option but to consider self-defensive means to cope with the threat in order to protect the nation's dignity and right to existence," it said.

Pyongyang, however, left open the door for dialogue with Washington to end a showdown over the country's renewed nuclear program.

The 1994 deal has fallen apart since U.S. revelations in October that North Korea is running a weapons program based on enriched uranium technology.

The energy-poor country said on December 12 it is restarting a five-megawatt facility at Yongbyon because it needs electricity after the United States cut off fuel shipments last month.

It has disabled UN monitoring equipment, removed seals from nuclear facilities frozen under the 1994 accord, and moved fresh nuclear fuel rods to the research reactor, which is said to be capable of producing plutonium.

Tensions rose rapidly last week after North Korea ordered International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors to leave its nuclear complex in Yongbyon by Tuesday, after eight years of monitoring.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said the United States does not plan to strike North Korea, which is still technically at war with South Korea after the 1950-1953 Korean War ended in stalemate. "Military action is never off the table in the sense that it is not an option," Powell told CBS television. "We just don't think the circumstances at this time require us to point a gun at someone's head." But he maintained that President George W. Bush "always has every option."

Analysts said the North's leadership was exploiting Washington's preoccupation with Iraq to force it back to the negotiating table and win concessions.

"I don't know if this is brinkmanship or whether or not they're serious, but we're taking it seriously," Powell said.

He said Washington does not feel the situation "rises to a crisis atmosphere," calling for a united front with South Korea, Russia and China.

Powell said U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly will visit South Korea soon for talks on ending the crisis.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration has prepared a policy of putting financial and political pressure on Pyongyang, the ***New York Times*** reported Sunday.

Under the plan, U.S. officials are willing to negotiate, but only North Korea first dismantles its nuclear weapons program.

If it refuses, the UN Security Council could threaten economic sanctions, while the U.S. military might intercept missile shipments to deprive North Korea of money from weapons sales, the daily said.