North Korea Threatens to Fire Nuclear Missile if U.S. Won't Commit to Talks

This is the way North Korea typically negotiates by threat and intimidation," John Bolton, U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said. "It's worked for them before. It won't work for them now." Meanwhile, the White House said the world may never be able to confirm North Korea's claim that it had successfully tested a nuclear weapon on Monday. White House press secretary Tony Snow suggested that the test may not have been nuclear in nature. "You could have something that is very old and off-the-shelf here, as well, in which case they've dusted off something that is old and dormant," he said. Snow said the intelligence community would continue to assess the explosion. A South Korean newspaper report said the North Korean blast was smaller than Pyongyang expected, but the unnamed North Korean diplomat called the explosion a "success" nonetheless. The latest North Korean threat came in a report by the country's Yonhap news agency. "We hope the situation will be resolved before an unfortunate incident of us firing a nuclear missile comes," it quoted an unidentified North Korean official as saying. "That depends on how the U.S. will act."