Posted on 03/26/2003 2:34:36 AM PST by Roy Tucker
North Korea has announced it is breaking off its only regular military contact with the United States in protest at ongoing American military exercises with South Korean forces.
North Korea and the US have no diplomatic ties, but military officials have held regular liaison talks at the South Korean border to discuss security issues.
A statement by the North Korean army warned that the US military was "pushing the situation on the Korean peninsula to the brink of war" and accused it of violating terms of the 1953 armistice which ended the Korean war.
The army warned it could take "new important measures" if the annual drills continued.
This year's exercises, which began before the US-led attack on Iraq, are a regular source of tension with the North.
The United States and North Korea are at loggerheads over the North's recently restarted nuclear programme, which the Communist regime says is necessary to compensate for the loss of American fuel aid.
A United Nations official in Seoul has confirmed that the North plans to continue its nuclear programme until the US agrees to talks.
Officials in Pyongyang told him last week that the North had no plans to build nuclear weapons but were acting "in its economic interests and in its security interests", Maurice Strong told Reuters Television.
The officials who spoke to Mr Strong added that the North "reserved the right" to reprocess spent nuclear fuel at its Yongbyon site.
In another development, the North again warned Japan against launching its first spy satellite into orbit this week.
Tokyo faced "self-destruction", a statement by the North Korean news agency said.
'Formal assurance'
Pyongyang was reassured by US statements that it did not intend to take military action against it, Mr Strong added, but it would prefer to receive a "formal assurance".
North Korea and the US have been locked in an escalating stand-off since October when the US said that North Korea had admitted to be developing a covert nuclear weapons programme.
The US cut off fuel aid to North Korea in protest.
Since then, North Korea has kicked weapons inspectors out of the country, reactivated the Yongbyon facility and pulled out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
North Korea has repeatedly called for direct talks with the US, but Washington has said it will only hold discussions with Pyongyang if the North's neighbours, Japan and South Korea, are involved.
The United States and North Korea are at loggerheads over the North's recently restarted nuclear programme, which the Communist regime says is necessary to compensate for the loss of American fuel aid.
That's hogwash, we cut off the fuel aid (which we shouldn't have given in the first place)because they developed a nuclear weapons program.
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