REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, LONDON/SEOUL - North Korea has asked embassies to consider moving staff out and warned it cannot guarantee the safety of diplomats after April 10, Britain said, amid high tension and a war of words on the Korean peninsula.

The requests come on the heels of declarations by the government of the secretive communist state that real conflict is inevitable, because of what it terms "hostile" US troop exercises with South Korea and UN sanctions imposed over North Korea's nuclear weapons testing.

"The current question was not whether, but when a war would break out on the peninsula," because of the "increasing threat from the United States", China's state news agency Xinhua quoted the North's Foreign Ministry as saying.

It added that diplomatic missions should consider evacuation. North Korea would provide safe locations for diplomats in accordance with international conventions, Xinhua quoted the ministry as saying in a notification to embassies. Under the Vienna Convention that governs diplomatic missions, host governments are required to help get embassy staff out of the country in the event of conflict.

Britain said its embassy in Pyongyang had been told by the North Korean government it "would be unable to guarantee the safety of embassies and international organizations in the country in the event of conflict from April 10th".

"We believe they have taken this step as part of their continuing rhetoric that the US poses a threat to them," Britain's Foreign Office said.

It said it had "no immediate plans" to evacuate its embassy and accused the North Korean government of raising tensions "through a series of public statements and other provocations."

A Polish spokesman said Warsaw saw the latest statements by Pyongyang as "an inappropriate element of building up the pressure and we obviously think that there is no risk from outside on North Korea". He added that the Polish embassy saw no need to move staff out.

"This question has been directed to all embassies that are on the ground in Pyongyang," a Swedish Foreign Office official said.

Russia's Foreign Ministry said North Korea had "proposed that the Russian side consider the evacuation of employees in the increasingly tense situation", according to a spokesman for its embassy in Pyongyang.

Moscow said it was "seriously studying" the request. A statement from its foreign ministry said Russia hoped all parties would show restraint and considered "whipping up military hysteria to be categorically unacceptable."

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