North Korea warns war will bring 'nuclear holocaust'

North Korea welcomed the new year Saturday with a push for better ties with rival South Korea, warning that war "will bring nothing but a nuclear holocaust."

Despite calls in its annual New Year's message for a Korean peninsula free of nuclear weapons, the North, which has conducted two nuclear tests since 2006, also said its military was ready for "prompt, merciless and annihilatory action" against its enemies.

The North's holiday message - scrutinized by officials and analysts in neighboring countries for policy clues - comes in the wake of its Nov. 23 artillery attack on a front-line South Korean island near the countries' disputed western sea border. That barrage, which followed an alleged North Korean torpedoing of a South Korean warship in March, sent tensions between the Koreas soaring and fueled fears of war during the last weeks of 2010.

Also Saturday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon vowed to help improve tense relations between South and North Korea. Ban spoke with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak by telephone and said the world body would closely consult with Seoul, Lee's office said in a statement posted on its Web site.

Ban, a former South Korean foreign minister, made the pledge as Lee called for the U.N.'s cooperation in improving ties between South and North Korea. Lee called the 2011 as an "important year for the South-North relations," Lee's office said, without elaborating.

North Korea, in a joint editorial in three newspapers, carried in the official Korean Central News Agency, said confrontation between the two Koreas should be quickly defused and called for a push to improve Korean relations.

"The danger of war should be removed and peace safeguarded in the Korean peninsula," said the message, which was also emphatically read by a North Korean anchorwoman, wearing traditional Korean dress, in a state television broadcast monitored in Seoul. "If a war breaks out on this land, it will bring nothing but a nuclear holocaust."

South Korea's Unification Ministry, which handles relations with North Korea, said the North's statement expressed its commitment to hold talks with the South.

The message shows the North wants to rejoin international nuclear disarmament talks, said Kim Yong-hyun, a North Korea analyst at Seoul's Dongguk University, noting there was no criticism of the United States, which the North often lashes out at.

The editorial said North Korea will strive to develop cooperative relations with countries that are friendly toward it, a reference Kim said was designed to send a message to Washington.

Six-nation talks on ending North Korea's nuclear weapons program have been stalled for nearly two years.

The North has previously used aggression to force negotiations. Recently, it has said it is willing to return to the talks. Washington and Seoul, however, are insisting that the North make progress on past disarmament commitments before negotiations can resume.

Four South Koreans, including two civilians, were killed in the November shelling of Yeonpyeong Island, which North Korea carried out after warning Seoul against conducting live-fire drills there. The attack was the first on a civilian area since the 1950-53 Korean War.

The South Korean government has strengthened security and deployed additional troops and weaponry to Yeonpyeong, which lies just seven miles (11 kilometers) from North Korean shores.

North Korea does not recognize the maritime border drawn by the U.N. in 1953, and it claims the waters around the island as its own. The Korean peninsula remains technically in a state of war because the conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.

In the North Korean capital, leader Kim Jong Il enjoyed a New Year's concert on Friday along with his youngest son and heir apparent, Kim Jong Un, and other senior officials as the audience enthusiastically cheered the senior Kim, state media said.

Red flags fluttered across the capital Saturday as citizens paid respects to the country's late founder Kim Il Sung, offering bouquets of flowers at a huge bronze statue of Kim standing on a hill overlooking Pyongyang, state media said.

In the South, President Lee told his people in a videotaped message that he was full of hope for 2011.

"I am confident that we will be able to establish peace on the Korean peninsula and continue sustained economic growth," he said.

In the North's New Year's message, Pyongyang repeated its vow to "launch an all-out, vigorous offensive" to build a prosperous country by 2012. That year marks the 100th anniversary of Kim Il Sung's birth.That impending anniversary has South Korean leaders worried that the North's push for prosperity could involve more aggression against the South.

The North's New Year's editorial said the North "is consistent in its stand and will to achieve peace in Northeast Asia and denuclearization of the whole of the Korean peninsula."

North Korea also stoked new worries about its nuclear program in November when it revealed a uranium enrichment facility - which could give it a second way to make atomic bombs. North Korea is believed to have enough weaponized plutonium for at least a half-dozen atomic bombs.