Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
New York Times
March 4, 2008 By Choe Sang-Hun
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said Monday that annual American-South Korean military exercises that began over the weekend could further delay progress on ending the North’s nuclear weapons programs.
Although such criticism from the Communist country is routine, it dampened hopes for warmer ties between the United States and North Korea — hopes that had been raised after the New York Philharmonic’s concert last Tuesday in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.
News also emerged from Pyongyang over the weekend that the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, who did not attend the Philharmonic’s concert, paid a rare visit to the Chinese Embassy in Pyongyang on Saturday for “cordial talks” — a move that suggested that Mr. Kim was striking a delicate diplomatic balance between the big powers.
The military exercise, which involves tens of thousands of United States and South Korean troops and the Nimitz, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, was “an exercise for invasion to trigger a nuclear war,” the North’s official Korean Central News Agency quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying. “This nuclear threat won’t work with us, but will only put the brakes on the denuclearization process on the Korean Peninsula.”
The United States and South Korea have been staging annual joint war games for years, and each year North Korea criticizes them.
The disarmament talks are bogged down over North Korea’s failure to meet the agreed-upon deadline of Dec. 31, 2007, to make a complete declaration of its nuclear programs.
Analysts say the main sticking point is North Korea’s reluctance to state whether it tried to enrich uranium or to transfer nuclear technology to Syria.
March 4, 2008 By Choe Sang-Hun
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said Monday that annual American-South Korean military exercises that began over the weekend could further delay progress on ending the North’s nuclear weapons programs.
Although such criticism from the Communist country is routine, it dampened hopes for warmer ties between the United States and North Korea — hopes that had been raised after the New York Philharmonic’s concert last Tuesday in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.
News also emerged from Pyongyang over the weekend that the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, who did not attend the Philharmonic’s concert, paid a rare visit to the Chinese Embassy in Pyongyang on Saturday for “cordial talks” — a move that suggested that Mr. Kim was striking a delicate diplomatic balance between the big powers.
The military exercise, which involves tens of thousands of United States and South Korean troops and the Nimitz, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, was “an exercise for invasion to trigger a nuclear war,” the North’s official Korean Central News Agency quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying. “This nuclear threat won’t work with us, but will only put the brakes on the denuclearization process on the Korean Peninsula.”
The United States and South Korea have been staging annual joint war games for years, and each year North Korea criticizes them.
The disarmament talks are bogged down over North Korea’s failure to meet the agreed-upon deadline of Dec. 31, 2007, to make a complete declaration of its nuclear programs.
Analysts say the main sticking point is North Korea’s reluctance to state whether it tried to enrich uranium or to transfer nuclear technology to Syria.