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SEOUL - North Korea said yesterday that the US-led Iraq war was part of a strategy to attack it and told South Korea it was playing with fire if it tried to boost defenses against the North during the Gulf conflict.

North Korea, which Washington has linked with Iraq and Iran in an ''axis of evil,'' also made its first comment on the US-led Iraq war, saying it would have ''disastrous consequences.''

The isolated communist state is locked in a standoff with Washington and Seoul over its nuclear ambitions and fears it could be the United States' next target after the war in Iraq.

Seoul is on guard for any steps by North Korea to ratchet up tension in the nuclear crisis, following antiship missile tests at sea and the interception of a US spy plane in recent weeks. There are widespread expectations the North will soon test a ballistic missile.

State-run KCNA said annual US military exercises being held in South Korea showed that the United States wanted to dominate the world by taking out Iraq and the North.

''What merits serious attention is that the DPRK-targeted saber-rattling is being staged in real earnest, timed to coincide with the US attack on Iraq,'' the agency said.

DPRK is the acronym for the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

South Korea's Unification Ministry said North Korea had been informed in advance of these annual exercises and the US Army said the drills were planned nine months ago.

The North Korean organization responsible for handling ties with the South told Seoul it was ''adding fuel to the flames of war kindled by outsiders'' by taking steps to prevent adventurism by Pyongyang during the war with Iraq.

''The South Korean authorities, under the manipulation of the US, kicked up an anti-North racket with the Iraqi war as a momentum,'' said the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland.

''This is an undisguised challenge and intolerable hostility toward the North,'' KCNA quoted the committee as saying.

KCNA referred to reports in South Korean media which said the South had raised its military alert status. Seoul flatly denied those reports on Thursday.

Seoul's Unification Ministry said on yesterday that Pyongyang had ignored South Korean statements saying the Iraq conflict must not be allowed to hurt inter-Korean relations.

''We cannot but voice regret that North Korea is making assertions contrary to the facts and casting doubt on our conciliatory intentions,'' the ministry said in a statement.

North Korea has long sought to drive a wedge between South Korea and the United States, military allies since 1953. On Thursday, the South's President Roh Moo Hyun voiced support for the US war in Iraq and offered to send 600 non-combat troops.

The North also told South Korea yesterday to stop loudspeaker broadcasts of propaganda across the Demilitarized Zone frontier (the world's most heavily fortified border) or face serious consequences.

KCNA said South Korean propaganda messages across the DMZ had resumed after a lull. The two Koreas had agreed to stop 50 decades of high-decibel cross-border slander in 2000.

''If you do not take immediate measures to halt these damaging messages then you will be completely responsible for the serious consequences that result,'' the North's military said in a letter to the South, according to KCNA.

This story ran on page A6 of the Boston Globe on 3/22/2003.