Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

DPRK FM Spokesman Assails Projected U.S.-S. Korea Joint War Exercises

Korean Central News Agency of DPRK via Korea News Service (KNS)

    Pyongyang, March 23 (KCNA) -- A spokesman for the DPRK Foreign Ministry issued a statement Thursday to denounce the U.S. bellicose group and the south Korean authorities for planning to stage large-scale RSOI and "Foal Eagle" joint military exercises across south Korea from Mar. 25 to 31. The war maneuvers will involve the U.S. troops in its mainland, in south Korea and overseas, more than 20,000 in all, as well as huge south Korean forces. Dismissing the exercises as aggressive and adventurous saber-rattling for a preemptive nuclear attack on the DPRK from A to Z, the statement goes on: Latest war means including Stealth fighter bombers and a nuclear-powered carrier and huge field troops of the U.S. are being hurled into south Korea and waters around it, something unprecedented in recent years, to stage madcap offensive exercises of various forms simulating an actual war such as landing, river-crossing, aerial attack and advance deep into the north.
    The U.S. decision to let carrier Abraham Lincoln and its task flotilla participate in the exercises goes to clearly indicate what reckless and dangerous phase the U.S. moves for a preemptive attack have reached as it is a sort of demonstration of its military muscle before the DPRK.
    The Bush administration pressurized the south Korean authorities to agree on the "strategic flexibility" of the U.S. forces present in south Korea. And it readopted the "theory of a preemptive attack" as the doctrine of the national security policy in its wake. It is quite obvious that the saber-rattling the Bush administration is going to launch against this backdrop will threaten regional peace and security and adversely affect the favorably developing north-south relations as it envisages wartime operations in the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia.
    The U.S. is gravely mistaken if it calculates that to procrastinate, while tightening sanctions against the DPRK and escalating the tension, would help induce the DPRK to make a sort of switchover in its stand but it is not only the Bush warlike group that will benefit from this delay.
    Now that the U.S. intention to stifle the DPRK has become very clear, the DPRK will react to it with a strong measure for self-defence.