North Korea threatens to call off talks with South

http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=6448842&cKey=113937
7820000

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea threatened to halt talks with Seoul unless it
pulls out of joint U.S.-South Korean military drills which Pyongyang sees as a
preparation for an invasion, its official media reported on Wednesday.

North and South Korea have held numerous discussions on a wide array of measures
to boost cooperation. Officials from the two Koreas agreed last week, for
example, to resume military talks between generals that had been suspended since
June 2004.

Talks are aimed at reducing tensions between the two armies that face each other
across the heavily fortified border, known as the Demilitarised Zone.

North Korea routinely criticises joint South Korean-U.S. military exercises, but
Wednesday's outburst came soon after the two Koreas agreed on the defence talks.

The North's communist party newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, said in a news analysis it
was wrong of South Korea to say it would hold exercises at about the same time
the two Koreas were holding talks on military confidence-building measures.

"Dialogue can never go together with war exercises," the newspaper said,
according to the North's KCNA news agency. "This is a challenge to the dialogue
partner and a mockery of it."

It was not clear whether the North had in mind all talks or just the military
meetings.

"The South Korean authorities' announcement of their plan to stage those war
exercises against the North goes to prove that 'dialogue', 'reconciliation',
'building of military confidence' and 'detente' much touted by them are nothing
but rhetoric to deceive the public opinion," the newspaper said.

Indonesia sent a special envoy to Pyongyang earlier this month to try to broker
a meeting of North and South Korean defence ministers.

Envoy Nana Sutresna said in Seoul on Tuesday he and the North Koreans discussed
the defence ministers' meeting "in very general terms" and declined to comment
further.

The United States has about 30,000 troops in South Korea working with about
690,000 South Korean troops. North Korea has most of its million-strong military
positioned near the Demilitarised Zone.

The two Koreas are technically still at war because the 1950-1953 Korean War
ended with a truce and not a peace treaty.

South Korea is also part of separate six-country talks aimed at ending North
Korea's nuclear weapons programmes. Those talks have hit a snag over a U.S.
crackdown on firms it suspects of helping North Korea in illicit activities such
as counterfeiting.

North Korea has called the U.S. action sanctions and said they are aimed at
toppling the North's leaders.

South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon told reporters it was regrettable the
talks had been delayed.

(With additional reporting by Jack Kim)

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Alan

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Can't you see we're still here,
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