TOKYO Feb. 10 -- North Korea on Thursday declared itself a de facto nuclear power, claiming in its strongest terms to date that it had "manufactured nuclear weapons" to defend itself from the United States and saying it would withdraw indefinitely from international disarmament talks.

Since withdrawing from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and ejecting weapons inspectors in a dispute with the Bush administration in late 2002, North Korea has used less specific language, both publicly and privately, to describe the development of what it has dubbed a "nuclear deterrent." But on Thursday, an official North Korean statement employed wording that analysts and several Asian diplomats saw as a virtual declaration that it has become a nuclear power. "In response to the Bush administration's increasingly hostile policy toward North Korea, we . . . have manufactured nuclear weapons for self-defense," the government said in official statement through the its Korean Central News Agency.

Without evidence of a nuclear test, considered difficult given North Korea's small size and broad border with its chief benefactor, China, North Korea's assertion remains just that -- an assertion. The statement, however, seemed in concert with U.S. intelligence officials who have privately estimated that North Korea has developed a cache of at least a couple of nuclear devices and has reprocessed 8,000 spent fuel rods into plutonium -- potentially enough to make as many as six more.

The declaration, nonetheless, raised the stakes for a quick diplomatic solution to the North Korea nuclear issue while posing new hurdles for the Bush administration as it tries to bring Pyongyang back to disarmament talks that have been stalled since last June. In recent days, administration officials have briefed Asian allies on evidence that North Korea sold nuclear material to Libya in 2001, demonstrating the urgency in bringing Pyongyang into compliance.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is winding up her weeklong diplomatic debut abroad, warned North Korea to reconsider its choice to break off disarmament talks or face deepening isolation from the rest of the world and greater suffering for its people.

In Luxembourg, Rice outlined stark alternatives if the regime of Kim Jong Il does not abandon its "unfortunate" boycott. "With our deterrent capability on the Korean peninsula . . . the United States and its allies can deal with any potential threat from North Korea. And North Korea, I think, understands that. But we are trying to give the North Koreans a different path," Rice said at a press conference with three European Union leaders.

Rice told reporters that she hopes the United States and its allies engaged in the six-party talks -- China, Russia, South Korea and Japan -- will confer again soon to resolve the standoff.

But in response to North Korea's declaration today that it has a nuclear program, Rice said the United States has assumed Pyongyang had a nuclear capability since the mid-1990s.

South Korea and Japan on Thursday called on Pyongyang to return to the disarmament talks and raised the possibility of international sanctions if it does not.

Asian diplomats had hoped that Bush's relatively conciliatory State of the Union Speech last month would do the trick. After calling North Korea a member of the "Axis of Evil" with Iran and Iraq three years ago, Bush refrained from reiterating a hard-line approach against North Korea, instead emphasizing the need for international cooperation to solve the crisis.

But in its Thursday statement, North Korea latched on to Rice's statements during her confirmation hearings, suggesting that her identification of North Korea as "an outpost of tyranny" meant U.S. policy -- demanding unilateral disarmament without economic and diplomatic incentives up front -- had not changed. North Korea outlined a rationale not only for indefinitely boycotting the six-party disarmament talks but also for increasing its nuclear arsenal.

"The Bush administration termed the DPRK" -- North Korea's official name -- "an 'outpost of tyranny,' " North Korea said in Thursday's statement. "This deprived the DPRK of any justification to participate in the six-party talks" and "compels us to take a measure to bolster our nuclear weapons arsenal in order to protect the ideology, system, freedom and democracy chosen by the people in the DPRK."

North Korea was seen by analysts as withholding an earlier declaration as a nuclear power in part as a bargaining chip in the talks. Many believe it had delayed a return to the table to see if Bush was re-elected, and then, what the new administration's policy might be.

Analysts concluded that North Korea's statement Thursday meant it no longer saw anything to lose given that the Bush administration, with a largely similar cast, is now entrenched for four more years.

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