The U.S. said Sunday that North Korea must act within days on a pledge to halt its nuclear weapons program, while the communist regime marked the birthday of its late founder with pomp and tough rhetoric.North Korea failed to meet a Saturday deadline to shut down and seal its bomb-making nuclear reactor under a February disarmament agreement. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said Washington was prepared "to hold on for a few more days" after his Chinese counterpart, Wu Dawei, asked the U.S. for patience. "We're not happy that the (North) essentially has missed this very important deadline," Hill told reporters after talks with Wu in Beijing. "We're obviously going to be watching the situation very closely in the coming days."
The United States sent a message to North Korea through its embassy in China urging it to fulfill commitments in the February agreement, which would give the North energy aid and political concessions for disarming. The North said last week it will only move when it receives money from accounts frozen in 2005 after the U.S. blacklisted a Macau bank to pressure the regime, its main precondition for agreeing to disarm. The $25 million was freed for withdrawal last week, but it remains unclear when the North will receive the money.