N.Korea calls U.S. 'criminals" days after Bush letter

SEOUL (Reuters) - Days after the U.S. president sent his first letter to North Korea's leader in a bid to further diplomacy, the communist state accused the American government on Tuesday of being reckless criminals trying to stir up war.

North Korea's official media slammed the United States for a recent deployment of fighter jets and other armaments in and around South Korea.

"Such moves are a part of the U.S. conservative hardliners' invariable hostile policy towards the DPRK (North Korea) and a reckless criminal act of chilling the denuclearisation process in the Korean peninsula and driving the situation into the brink of war," said the communist party mouthpiece, Rodong Sinmun.

Anti-U.S. diatribes of this sort are common fodder in the North's official media but this report comes after President George W. Bush made his first direct appeal to leader Kim Jong-il in a letter delivered last week.

In the letter, Bush urged Kim to make good on his country's pledge to disable its nuclear arms complex and declare all of its nuclear activities.

Bush, who once branded North Korea as part of an "axis of evil", told Kim that nuclear diplomacy was at a "critical juncture", U.S. officials said.

Under a deal North Korea reached with the United States, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea, the secretive state must disable its plutonium-producing nuclear complex and give a full accounting of its atomic arms activity by the end of the year in exchange for aid and an end to international ostracism.