North Korea cries foul over military drill in the South

Seoul: South Korean and US forces began annual military drills on Monday as a North Korean military spokesman denounced the exercises as a prelude to war and said they spoiled the prospects for nuclear disarmament talks.

The drills, called Ulchi Freedom Guardian, will continue until Friday and come as envoys in talks on ending the North's nuclear arms programme discuss a mechanism to verify claims Pyongyang made about its production of arms-grade plutonium.

About 56,000 South Korean troops and 10,000 US troops will join the exercises, South Korean and US military officials said.

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak led a meeting of his National Security Council yesterday in a secure basement bunker of the presidential palace as part of the drill, officials said.

"In our relationship with the North, there always exists the possibility of localised conflict, so we cannot afford to loosen our readiness," presidential officials quoted Lee as saying.

Official media in the North meanwhile quoted a military spokesman as saying: "The Korean People's Army will not stand idly by as the bellicose forces in the US and the South mount the Ulchi Freedom Guardian as conservative US hardliners brand us a rogue state again and erase a series of progress made on denuclearising the Korean peninsula."