,
SEOUL: The United States is more responsible than North Korea itself for Pyongyang's nuclear test, according to a South Korean poll published Monday.
Forty-three percent of respondents picked the United States as most to blame, followed by 37.3 percent who chose the country which actually conducted the October 9 test.
Nearly 14 percent said South Korea was most responsible, 2.4 percent picked China and one percent singled out Japan.
The telephone poll reported by the Korea Times was conducted among 500 adults by a local research firm from October 11-12.
South Korea has sheltered under the US security umbrella since the end of the Korean War in 1953, but latent anti-Americanism exists in the country.
A survey in September last year showed that a majority of South Koreans want a gradual or quick withdrawal of US troops from the Korean peninsula, citing what was seen at the time as a reduced threat from North Korea.
The US currently has 29,500 troops based in the South.
Some commentators here have questioned the Bush administration's commitment to diplomacy, including six-party disarmament talks, to end the North Korean nuclear crisis.
The Korea Times, in an editorial, cited the autobiography of former US Secretary of States Colin Powell as saying the “US neocons' eventual goal is regime change in Pyongyang and the six-party meeting was just a pretence.”
It added: “The isolationist (Pyongyang) regime's sense of the US security threat may be overblown, but not entirely groundless.”
The paper said the Republican administration's North Korea policy so far “has been a near-total failure. It is time for the US leader to mind not just his party's election victory, but his own legacy in the global peace process.”
