SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea marked the 66th birthday of leader Kim Jong Il on Saturday with an appeal for its impoverished people to unite around the strongman amid a deadlock in negotiations over the country's nuclear weapons programs.
The main Rodong Sinmun newspaper ran a lengthy editorial full of praises for Kim for strengthening the North's "political and military force" ― an apparent reference to the country's first nuclear test in 2006.
"We have to unite and unite again around the leadership, upholding the slogan 'Let's safeguard the revolutionary leadership led by Comrade Kim Jong Il with our lives!'" the paper said, according to the North's Korean Central News Agency.
Kim's birthday is one of the most celebrated holidays in North Korea, along with the birthday of his late father and national founder Kim Il Song.
The North's newspaper made no mention of the nuclear standoff.
The United States accuses the North of refusing to give a full list of its nuclear programs under a disarmament agreement reached last year.
North Korea claims it gave the U.S. the list in November, but Washington says the Pyongyang government never provided a "complete and correct" disclosure of the programs.
Washington has refused to take the North off a U.S. terrorism blacklist, a coveted goal of Pyongyang, until negotiators have the list.
Under the 2007 deal with the U.S., South Korea, China, Russia and Japan, the North agreed to disable its main plutonium-making facilities and account for all its nuclear programs in return for energy aid and political concessions.
U.S. and South Korean officials say the disablement work has gone relatively well, though it is behind schedule.
On Friday, North Korea's No. 2 leader, Kim Yong Nam, blamed the United States for the stalemate in the six-nation nuclear negotiations.
"U.S. hard-line conservative forces have been provoking us and have deliberately aggravated the tension on the Korean peninsula with reckless military modernization plans behind the scenes of the six-party talks," he told a ceremony marking the birthday.
It was not clear what military plans he was referring to. The U.S. has said it has been upgrading the technical capabilities of its forces as it reduces the number of troops deployed in South Korea to about 25,000 by the end of the year.
The North Korean newspaper vowed to strengthen the military under Kim Jong Il's "songun" or "military-first" policy and rebuild the economy.
Kim Jong Il took over the country after his father died of heart failure in 1994 in communism's first hereditary power succession. Kim, who inherited a strong cult of personality from his father, has three sons with two different mothers but has not anointed any of them as his successor.
North Korean TV, seen in Seoul, showed military officers holding a commemorative gathering at Kim's purported birthplace at Mount Paekdu, the highest peak on the Korean peninsula, with colorful fireworks exploding in the night sky.
KCNA said congratulatory messages and gifts were flooding in from overseas, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and acting Cuban President Raul Castro.
