North Korea threatens
to end Armistice
South Korea says there is no risk of war with its neighbor Tuesday, February 18, 2003 |
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SEOUL, South Korea,
In an apparent attempt to force direct dialogue with the United States,
North Korea threatened on Tuesday to abandon the armistice that ended the
Korean War five decades ago, accusing Washington of planning an attack.
A spokesman for the North’s Korean People’s Army said “the situation on
the Korean Peninsula is getting extremely tense” because of alleged U.S.
plans to send reinforcements and build a naval blockade to prepare for
a pre-emptive attack. The nations are locked in a dispute over North Korea’s
nuclear program.Lt. Gen. David D. McKiernan, who would lead U.S. and British
land forces in any invasion of Iraq, told CNN's Bill Hemmer in an interview
that "if we are called upon to execute a mission we are ready to do it."
NORTH KOREA “will be left with no option but to take a decisive step to abandon its commitment to implement the Armistice Agreement ... and free itself from the binding force of all its provisions,” said the unidentified spokesman, quoted by the North’s state-run KCNA news agency. Armed forces of the two Koreas were in the middle of their annual winter training. But South Korean and U.S. officials saw no immediate indication North Korea planned to launch a major attack across the border. |
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said
the threat is part of a series of statements from Pyongyang, “all of which
only serve to hurt, isolate and move North Korea backward.” He said the
standoff remains a matter for the international community.
Fleischer said the U.S. “reacts somewhat judiciously to the statements North Korea makes. There’s a history of bravado in some of their statements.” INCREASED TENSIONS POSSIBLE Even if Tuesday’s announcement is largely symbolic, any change in the armistice — the only existing legal instrument keeping an uneasy peace on the peninsula — could greatly increase tensions and uncertainty. The 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty, leaving the peninsula still technically in a state of war. The frontier is the world’s most heavily armed with most of the nearly 2 million troops of both sides deployed near the border, including 37,000 Americans stationed in the South. The threat was the latest North Korean
move in an international dispute over its suspected nuclear weapons development.
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