North Korea invites US envoy, issues "strongest" threat

North Korea invited US envoy Christopher Hill to Pyongyang in an apparent bid to renew stalled talks over its nuclear weapons programme. But it also threatened to take the "strongest" but unspecified measure if Washington maintained a "hostile policy" towards the Stalinist state. It said Hill, a US assistant secretary of state, would be welcome in Pyongyang if Washington sincerely wanted to uphold a joint statement agreed last September at six-party nuclear disarmament talks. "If the United States has sincerely made a political decision to implement the joint statement, we again invite the US chief delegate to six-way talks to visit Pyongyang and explain it directly to us," a North Korean foreign ministry spokesman told the official Korean Central News Agency.