SEOUL: North Korea yesterday condemned a port visit by a US aircraft carrier to the South as a “reckless” act of provocation following proposals by Pyongyang to ease cross-border tensions.
The USS George Washington arrived in the southern port of Busan on Friday for joint military exercises starting next week.
A spokesman of the Policy Department of the North’s National Defence Commission said the visit was “little short of its ‘gunboat diplomacy’ in the last century” and “in defiance” of the North’s overtures.
“The US should properly understand that the more persistently it resorts to reckless nuclear blackmail and threat, the further the DPRK (North Korea) will bolster up its cutting edge nuclear force for self-defence,” the spokesman was quoted as saying by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.
“Whenever there was a sign of improving the north-south relations and detente on the peninsula, the US resorted to sinister interference and obstructions,” he said in reference to the upcoming drills.
The George Washington is scheduled to take part in joint exercises with the South Korean navy from July 16-21 as part of annual military drills, Seoul’s Yonhap news agency said.
It will then participate in a search and rescue exercise with South Korean and Japanese maritime forces in waters off the southern island of Jeju for two days starting July 21, it said.
AFP
