SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea lashed out yesterday at President Bush for turning “a peaceful world into a pandemonium unprecedented in history,” and reaffirmed it won’t attend preparatory meetings ahead of planned nuclear disarmament talks.

Last week, Mr. Bush referred to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il as a “tyrant,” and said he had embarked on six-nation talks to convince Mr. Kim to disarm because America couldn’t do it alone.

The next round of talks – which also include China, Japan, Russia, and South Korea – are supposed to take place by the end of September.

Alleging that Mr. Bush has ramped up his hostile rhetoric, an unnamed spokesman from the North Korean Foreign Ministry said the president’s comments “clearly disclosed that it is the real intention of the U.S. to bring down the system in the DPRK by force though everything in the world may change.”

The North also leveled personal attacks at Mr. Bush, calling him “a political imbecile bereft of even elementary morality as a human being and a bad guy, much less being a politician.”

“Bush is a tyrant that puts Hitler into the shade and his group of such tyrants is a typical gang of political gangsters,” the statement said.

“Bush’s assumption of office turned a peaceful world into a pandemonium unprecedented in history as it is plagued with a vicious circle of terrorism and war,” the official said.