Beijing ? Striving mightily to goad Washington to pay attention, North Korea on Tuesday called President Bush “human trash,” raising its invective to a new level a day after labeling the U.S. leader a “political idiot” and comparing him with Adolf Hitler.

It was the second consecutive day that North Korea has issued unusually strident personal criticism of Bush.

In its tirade, the communist North Korean government reiterated its contention that future six-party talks on its nuclear weapons program were pointless.

North Korea “can no longer pin any hope on the six-party talks, and there is a question as to whether there is any need for it to negotiate with the U.S. anymore,” the statement said.

While impoverished North Korea has used insults to capture Washington’s attention before negotiations, the latest outpouring came while the talks were in limbo. Many analysts say the North Korean weapons crisis has entered relative dormancy until after the U.S. presidential elections in November.

But several factors appear to be irritating Pyongyang, including this week’s annual joint military exercises between U.S. and South Korean troops to strengthen their readiness for a possible war with the North. The exercises began Monday and will last 12 days.

South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-Hyuk, meanwhile, arrived in Beijing to discuss ways to end a stalemate over the six-party talks, which China is host to and involve the United States, the two Koreas, Russia and Japan.

It’s still in doubt whether North Korean envoys will attend working group talks later this month in Beijing or more senior-level talks by the end of September. Three rounds of high-level talks have occurred since August 2003.

North Korea said Bush had “hurled malignant slander and calumnies” against it, an apparent reference to a campaign remark Wednesday in Wisconsin in which Bush explained why he sought the backing of other regional powers to get North Korea to disarm.

“I felt it was important to bring other countries into the mix, like China and Japan and South Korea and Russia, so there’s now five countries saying to the tyrant in North Korea disarm, disarm,” Bush said.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan on Tuesday called the latest comments “just more bluster.”

Rising to the challenge of global name-calling, North Korea’s latest statement said: “It is the greatest tragedy for the U.S. that Bush, a political idiot and human trash, still remains in the presidential office of the world’s only superpower, styling himself an emperor of the world.”