Monday, February 13, 2006
N Korea warns Seoul of nuclear war over US-led WMD
drill
SEOUL: Stalinist North Korea has warned South Korea against
sparking nuclear war by joining a US-led international drill
aimed at intercepting weapons of mass destruction, state media
said. Rodong Sinmun, the official communist party mouthpiece said
late Saturday Seouls participation in the drill would be
conspiring with the US in its moves for a war of aggression. It
is also a dangerous act of bringing the disaster of a nuclear war
to the Korean Peninsula, Rodong said in a dispatch carried by the
state-run Korean Central News Agency. South Korea said last month
it would send a team to observe a US-led Proliferation Security
Initiative (PSI) drill off Australia in April and that it would get
briefed regularly on the initiative. But Seoul says it has yet to
join the politically sensitive initiative, which Pyongyang believes
aims largely to blockade North Korea, at a time of burgeoning
inter-Korean rapprochement. North Korea is locked in a standoff
with the United States and its allies over Pyongyangs nuclear
programme. The PSI a US-led drive to improve global efforts to
intercept nuclear, chemical and biological weapons shipments by
rogue states and terrorist groups was launched in May 2003. It has
since held joint manoeuvres involving ships and maritime patrol
aircraft with over 60 nations signing up for the initiative. The
key signatories include the United States, Australia, Japan, New
Zealand, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the
Netherlands, Russia and Singapore. China, a North Korean ally, and
South Korea, which has sought closer ties with the North since a
peace summit in 2000, have yet to join the initiative. afp