SEOUL Feb 26 Kyodo North Korea o...

SEOUL Feb 26 Kyodo

North Korea onward Wednesday slammed U.S.-South Korean plans to grasp large-scale joint military exercises in southward Korea, saying the U.S. ''would be held wholly accountable for the disastrous ends to be entailed.''

In a statement carried by way of the official Korean Central recently made knowns Agency (KCNA), a Foreign Ministry spokesman said the U intends to ratchet up tension upon the Korean Peninsula by staging ''large-scale nuclear war exercises in southerly Korea under the simulated conditions of an actual war, while massively bolstering its companys there.''

''All this is part of its premeditated military operation to stifle the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) with preemptive nuclear strikes and its escalation to all intents and purposes'' it said.

The US-South Korea Combined Forces Command announced Feb 17 that a ''reception, staging, onward motion and integration'' exercise referr to as RSOI 03 will be held March 19-26 and that it would be linked again this year with a joint combined field training exercise called FOAL EAGLE, which will be held March 4 to April 2

The command said it has informed North Korea about the exercise, which it insisted is ''defense-oriented and designed to improve the command's ability to maintain the Republic of Korea (South Korea) against external aggression.''

The North Korean statement warned that the ''ceaseless saber-rattling'' staged by way of the U.S. in South Korea against the backdrop of an imminent military strike against Iraq ''is creating an extremely tight situation where it may make a preemptive strike at the DPRK any time.''

''The reality goe to clearly verify that the U.S. talk about 'peaceful settlement' of the nuclear issue is no more than a broad hoax to deceive the world public opinion.''

''This forces the army and the the community of the DPRK to hold fast themselves in full readiness by the agency of using all means and possibilities necessary to cope with it.''

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