North Korea blasted the United States for appointing a special envoy to monitor the North's human rights conditions.

In a Saturday commentary, Rodong Shinmun, the official daily of the North's Workers' Party, called the appointment a "highly inauspicious" move that would create a "whirlwind" ahead of a new round of six-way nuclear talks.

The paper said Pyongyang now doubts Washington's earlier statement that acknowledged the communist country as a sovereign state. It urged the U.S. to abolish the special envoy post and abandon its ambitions to topple the North Korean regime.

The North warned it may have to take a "different" approach to the six-nation talks unless Washington discards its hostility.

On August 19th, the White House named Jay Lefkowitz, a conservative hard-liner, as a State Department envoy charged with improving the human rights situation in North Korea.

The post was created last October after Congress passed the North Korea Human Rights Act.