KABUL — Hamid Karzai's spokesman denied reports the Afghan leader threatened to join the Taliban insurgency if he were pressured further by foreign backers, in an apparent attempt today to calm worsening tensions with Washington.

Karzai's comments, allegedly made in a meeting with lawmakers on Saturday, had been widely reported, prompting the White House to say a planned Washington visit might be canceled if Karzai didn't stop blaming the U.S. for his problems.

However, Karzai spokesman Waheed Omar said Karzai's government had been shocked to see the comment appearing in media outlets, and did not know where it came from.

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea sentenced an American teacher to 8 years of hard labor and ordered him to pay a $700,000 fine after he crossed illegally into the country — the fourth U.S. citizen to be detained by the isolated regime since last year.Aijalon Mahli Gomes, of Boston, acknowledged his wrongdoing during a trial at the Central Court Tuesday, the North's official Korean Central News Agency said in a brief dispatch today.The North said last month it arrested Gomes, 30, on Jan. 25 for trespassing after he crossed into the country from China.Gomes, a graduate of Bowdoin College in Maine, had been teaching English in South Korea.