Obama pledged Tuesday to resist using nuclear weapons against nations that comply with international nonproliferation standards -- exempting North Korea and Iran from the new policy.

Miffed by Obama's move, North Korea accused his government of being no better than the Bush administration, "hell-bent on posing a nuclear threat" to North Korea, and said it would not give up its atomic weapons.

"As long as the U.S. nuclear threat persists, (North Korea) will increase and update various type nuclear weapons as its deterrent in such a manner as it deems necessary in the days ahead," the official Korean Central News Agency quoted an unidentified Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying Friday.

North Korea had shown a willingness in recent months to return to the negotiations, but the ministry said Obama's new policy "chilled the hard-won atmosphere for the resumption of the talks."

President Barack Obama's advisers will remove religious terms such as "Islamic extremism" from the central document outlining the U.S. national security strategy and will use the rewritten document to emphasize that the United States does not view Muslim nations through the lens of terror, counterterrorism officials said.

The change is a significant shift in the National Security Strategy, a document that previously outlined the Bush Doctrine of preventative war and currently states: "The struggle against militant Islamic radicalism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century."

The revisions are part of a larger effort about which the White House talks openly, one that seeks to change not just how the United States talks to Muslim nations, but also what it talks to them about, from health care and science to business startups and education.

That shift away from terrorism has been building for a year, since Obama went to Cairo, Egypt, and promised a "new beginning" in the relationship between the United States and the Muslim world. The White House believes the previous administration based that relationship entirely on fighting terror and winning the war of ideas.

Ramamurthy runs the administration's Global Engagement Directorate, a four-person National Security Council team that Obama launched last May with little fanfare and a vague mission to use diplomacy and outreach "in pursuit of a host of national security objectives."Since then, the division has not only helped change the vocabulary of fighting terror but also has shaped the way the country invests in Muslim businesses, studies global warming, supports scientific research and combats polio.

Rescuers, tired from the high winds and thin oxygen, pulled survivors and more bodies from the pulverized remains of the town flattened by Wednesday morning's quake, the largest of which was magnitude 6.9. About 15,000 houses have collapsed.

"We've seen too many bodies and now they're trying to deal with them. The bodies are piled up like a hill. You can see bodies with broken arms and legs and it breaks your heart," said Dawa Cairen, a Tibetan who works for the Christian group the Amity Foundation and was helping in rescue efforts. "You can see a lot of blood. It's flowing like a river."

Zou said that 617 died in the quake, with 313 missing and more than 9,100 hurt.

Wednesday morning's quakes -- the worst of which measured magnitude 6.9 by the U.S. Geological Survey and 7.1 by China's earthquake administration -- were the worst to hit the region since the massive Sichuan earthquake two years ago left 90,000 dead or missing.

In a statement released Monday, Meyer said it is "increasingly evident" that the Bill introduced in the Ugandan parliament is a "profoundly offensive, dangerous and disturbing attack on the very foundation of individual liberties and human rights afforded not only to the good citizens of Uganda, but on the at-large global community".

Proposed last October, Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Bill seeks to strengthen the criminalisation of homosexuality in Uganda by introducing the death penalty for people who are considered serial offenders, are suspected of "aggravated homosexuality" and are HIV-positive, or who engage in sexual acts with those under 18 years of age.

Though Member of Parliament David Bahati, who proposed the Bill, said the legislation is necessary to protect Uganda's children from being "recruited" into homosexuality, the Bill has provoked criticism and protests internationally, including in the United States, where both liberal and conservative church leaders have expressed their opposition.

Among those who have spoken out against the legislation are Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) Presiding Bishop Mark S Hanson, popular megachurch pastor Rick Warren, and leaders of Exodus International - which claims to be the world's largest Christian referral and information network dealing with homosexual issues.

"As a global society, we do not have to agree, endorse or condone the lifestyle choices of others. However, history has taught us that we equally cannot and should not excuse those who would hide behind religion or misuse God's word to justify bigotry and persecution," she insisted.