PYONGYANG, March 20 (Xinhua) -- The official Rodong Sinmun newspaper on Monday vehemently refuted U.S. President George W. Bush's renewed description of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) as part of an "axis of evil."

    "The Korean people are expressing towering indignation at those outcries, terming them frenzy of a guy bereft of reason and spasm of a lunatic," said a Rodong Sinmun commentary, which was also carried by the country's KCNA news agency.

    According to a transcript of a Bush speech earlier this month, the U.S. leader said: "I said in an early speech there was an axis of evil, and it included Iran and North Korea."

    The commentary said the Bush administration's "bellicose doctrine of preemptive nuclear attack and war on terrorism" and its "hypocritical policy of spread of freedom and democracy" are the "very source of all evils in the world at present."

    "The U.S. imperialists provoked wars in the Persian Gulf, the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq in the 1990s and the new century, mercilessly destroying peaceful towns and villages and civilian establishments and cruelly killing countless innocent people," it said.

    The commentary stressed that Bush's repeated description of the DPRK as part of an "axis of evil" was "little short of declaring the U.S. stance that it still regards the DPRK as a target of military aggression, not a dialogue partner."

    "The army and people of the DPRK will heighten their vigilance against the U.S. and get fully ready to beat back any surprise invasion on their own initiative," it said. Enditem