North Korea’s three major state-run newspapers published an editorial on Tuesday urging the United States to abandon its “hostile” policies and proposed closer economic ties with South Korea under its president-elect, Lee Myung-bak. But the message, in a New Year’s editorial that is a customary vehicle for the country’s leader, Kim Jong-il, to set out his policy priorities, made no mention of the Dec. 31 deadline the country missed to declare all its nuclear activities — weapons, facilities and fissile material.

“An end should be put to the U.S. policy hostile toward North Korea,” the editorial said, reiterating Pyongyang’s justification for building nuclear weapons and detonating one in October 2006. “The source of war should be removed and lasting peace be ensured.”

Analysts and policy makers scrutinized the message for clues to Mr. Kim’s thinking. Some said it suggested that North Korea had no immediate plans to clarify, as Washington has demanded, whether it has pursued a clandestine program to enrich uranium for atomic weapons, besides its already known program of building bombs with plutonium.

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North Korea insists that it will not give up what it terms its self-defense nuclear program until the United States has taken measures to end Pyongyang’s international isolation and guarantee its security. It wants the United States to provide aid, remove it from its list of countries sponsoring terrorism and open diplomatic relations.

As an interim step toward these goals, North Korea agreed in October that it would first disable its nuclear facilities and give a complete accounting of its nuclear programs by the end of 2007 in return for a million tons of oil from the United States, South Korea, China and Russia.

North Korea has abided by parts of the agreement, beginning in November to disable its only functional reactor and two other nuclear facilities north of Pyongyang under the supervision of United States experts. The work aims at disabling the North’s main source for weapons-grade plutonium before its eventual dismantling.

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