SEOUL • The United States looks set to break a promise not to hold military exercises with South Korea, putting talks aimed at getting North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons at risk, the North's Foreign Ministry said yesterday.
Washington's pattern of "unilaterally reneging on its commitments" is leading Pyongyang to reconsider its own commitments to discontinue tests of nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles, it said in statements released through state news agency KCNA.
US President Donald Trump revitalised efforts to persuade the North to give up its nuclear weapons last month when he arranged a spur-of-the-moment meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on the border between the two Koreas.
Mr Trump said they had agreed to resume the so-called working-level talks, which have stalled since their second summit in February collapsed. The talks are expected to be held in the coming weeks.
But a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman cast doubt on that, saying the US and South Korea were pressing ahead with exercises called Dong Maeng this summer. The drills are expected next month.
"We will formulate our decision on the opening of the DPRK-US working-level talks, while keeping watch over the US move hereafter," the spokesman said, using the initials of North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
North Korea has for years denounced military exercises between the US and South Korea, but in recent months has increased its criticism as talks with Washington and Seoul stalled.
"It is crystal clear that it is an actual drill and a rehearsal of war aimed at militarily occupying our Republic by surprise attack," the North Korean spokesman said in a separate statement, adding that Mr Trump had reaffirmed at last month's meeting with Mr Kim that the exercises would be halted.
Mr Trump, in his first meeting with Mr Kim, in Singapore in June last year, said he would stop the drills, after the two leaders agreed to work towards the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.
While the main annual South Korean-US drills have been stopped, they still hold smaller exercises.
"Readiness remains the No. 1 priority for USFK," said Ms Jacqueline Leeker, a spokesman for US Forces Korea. "As a matter of standard operating procedure, and to preserve space for diplomacy to work, we do not discuss any planned training or exercises publicly."
Ms Leeker also said American and South Korean troops continued to train together, but had adjusted the size, scope, number and timing of exercises in order to "harmonise" training programmes with diplomatic efforts.
An official at South Korea's Ministry of Defence said it did not have immediate comment, but Seoul officials have previously said the drills are defensive in nature.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday voiced hope that both North Korea and the US could "be a little more creative" and bring in new ideas when the two sides restart the talks, although he did not say when they would resume.
"I hope the North Koreans will come to the table with ideas they didn't have the first time," he said in an interview. "We hope we can be a little more creative too."
Since the Singapore summit, North Korea has not tested any nuclear weapons or intercontinental ballistic missiles, though it tested new short-range missiles in May.
The US' decision to forge ahead with drills less than a month after Mr Trump and Mr Kim last met is "clearly a breach" of the two leaders' agreements made in Singapore last year, the North's Foreign Ministry spokesman said. "With the US unilaterally reneging on its commitments, we are gradually losing our justifications to follow through on the commitments we made with the US as well."
REUTERS
