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SEOUL, Friday (Reuters) North Korea's threat to display a "nuclear deterrent" at an appropriate time was dismissed in South Korea on Friday as bluff, and U.S. officials said they saw nothing new in the latest escalatory rhetoric from Pyongyang.

In comments published late on Thursday by the official KCNA news agency, a North Korean foreign ministry spokesman said the country would move to end debate over its nuclear status if the United States delayed a solution to a year-old nuclear impasse.

"When an appropriate time comes, the DPRK will take a measure to open its nuclear deterrent to the public as a physical force and then there will be no need to have any more argument," the spokesman said, noting some people doubted the North had nuclear capability.

Thursday's statement did not spell out how North Korea might display its "deterrent". It did not use the word "test".

In Washington on Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters: "They've said things like that before, and I don't know what they mean."

Early this month, North Korea said it had redirected plutonium extracted from thousands of spent nuclear fuel rods to help enhance its deterrent force. In 1994, U.S. intelligence officials estimated the North had processed enough plutonium for two bombs.

Government officials in South Korea, which has lived with North Korean sabre-rattling for decades, said they saw another attempt by the isolated communist state to grab U.S. attention.

"This looks like bluffing," said Rhee Bong-jo, policy chief of the National Security Council. He told reporters South Korea should avoid overreacting to the statement.

U.S. EYES NOVEMBER TALKS

President Roh Moo-hyun's national security adviser said North Korea was trying to raise the stakes in future negotiations.

"This looks like another negotiating card it is playing," Ra Jong-yil told reporters.

"They are trying to gain the upper hand in the next round of six-party talks."

China, Russia, the two Koreas, Japan and the United States held an inconclusive first round of talks in Beijing in late August.

All sides pledged to avoid steps that would aggravate the year-old dispute and all the parties except North Korea said they sought another round of talks.

The North's statement - published on the eve of a tour of Asia by U.S. President George W. Bush - said a fresh round of six-way nuclear talks would be meaningless unless the United States dropped its hostility toward North Korea. But it did not rule out further talks as it has previously done.

U.S. State Department spokesman Adam Ereli told reporters in Washington North Korea's statement contained nothing new, but the United States was working to open another round of six-way talks next month.

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