North Korea urges South Korea to stop military exercises with US (AFP) Updated: 2006-02-07 08:37
North Korea warned that there would no true progress in inter-Korean
relations unless South Korea stopped all joint military exercises with the
United States.
The warning came three days after South and North Korea agreed to resume
high-level military talks by early March on easing tension along the world's
last Cold War frontier.
Pyongyang's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland
accused South Korea and the United States of going ahead with join war games
targeting North Korea in March.
"The South Korean authorities should unconditionally stop all the joint
military exercises with outside forces which would bring dark clouds of a
nuclear war if they truly desire progress in the north-south relations and peace
on the Korean Peninsula," it said in a statement published by the North's
official KCNA news agency.
The committee insisted the plan for joint military exercises between South
Korea and the United States came at a time when the two Koreas were arranging
military talks.
"This is a very provocative act of negating the military talks themselves and
pushing the situation on the Korean Peninsula to the brink of war pursuant to
the US moves to start a war of aggression against the North," it said.
Economic exchanges between the rivals, which agreed only a ceasefire and not
a formal peace accord to end the 1950-1953 Korean War, have greatly increased
following an inter-Korean summit in 2000.
But North Korea has balked at high-level military talks with the South,
citing various issues including South Korea's joint military exercises with the
United States and a tense standoff with Washington over its nuclear weapons
drive.
South Korea has rejected the North's consistent demand to sever a
decades-long military alliance with Washington, which keeps troops here under a
mutual defense pact.
North Korea is continuing economic and regular ministerial talks with the
South Koreans. But it has refused to return to six-party nuclear talks unless
the United States lifts sanctions over alleged counterfeiting and money
laundering.
|