Text fwd: N. Korea Tells Its Military to Prepare for Combat

http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=3979917&c=ASI&s=TOP
N. Korea Tells Its Military to Prepare for Combat
By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Published: 8 Mar 16:36 EDT (20:36 GMT)

SEOUL - North Korea has ordered its military to be combat ready, state media said early March 9, ahead of joint U.S.-South Korean maneuvers that Pyongyang has repeatedly characterised as a prelude to war.

In a statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), the Korean People's Army (KPA) described the exercises starting March 9 as "unprecedented in the number of the aggressor forces involved and in their duration."

"The KPA Supreme Command issued an order to all the servicepersons to be fully combat ready," the statement added. "This is a just measure for self-defense for protecting the sovereignty and dignity of the nation."

"A war will break out if the U.S. imperialists and the warmongers of the South Korean puppet military hurl the huge troops and sophisticated strike means to mount an attack," it added.

The communist North has repeatedly accused Seoul and Washington of using the annual exercises, which this year last until March 20, as a pretext to launch an attack on it - a claim denied by the United States and the South.

The joint exercise will this year involve a U.S. aircraft carrier, 26,000 U.S. troops and more than 30,000 South Korean soldiers.

The exercises come at a time of high tensions with the South and growing pressure for the North to end its nuclear weapons program and drop plans to test its longest-range missile.

North Korea has said it is preparing to fire a rocket for what it has said will be a satellite launch, although Seoul and Washington say the real purpose is to test a missile that could theoretically reach Alaska.

In a separate statement, the General Staff of the Korean People's Army said it would retaliate "with prompt counter strikes by the most powerful military means" if there was an attempt to intercept its satellite."

The North has warned that the "slightest" military conflict during the exercises could rapidly escalate and fears of a border clash have grown since Pyongyang on Jan. 30 scrapped peace accords with Seoul and warned of war.

The United States has responded to the communist state's comments by urging Pyongyang to tone down its rhetoric.

North Korean generals last week met with the U.S.-led UN Command on easing tensions ahead of the joint exercises, in the first such talks in almost seven years, but reportedly used the opportunity to criticize the latest exercises.

The North is angry at South Korea's conservative leader Lee Myung-Bak, who scrapped his predecessors' policy of offering virtually unconditional aid to Pyongyang.

The two Koreas are still technically at war since the 1950-1953 Korean conflict ended only in an armistice.

A U.S.-led UN force fought for the South in the 1950-53 Korean war. The United States still stations 28,500 troops to back up Seoul's 680,000-strong military against the North's 1.1 million-member armed forces.

The exercises come as the new U.S. envoy on North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, said March 6 that a threat by Pyongyang against South Korean commercial airliners near its airspace was "a provocation."

The communist regime late March 5 announced it could not guarantee security for Seoul's flights near its territory because the U.S.-South Korean military exercises could trigger a war.

"This is, we believe, very undesirable," Bosworth told reporters after meeting Japan's Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone in Tokyo. "It's a provocation and it's unacceptable."

Bosworth is currently on a tour of China, Japan and South Korea, in an effort to dissuade the North from a launch and to try to persuade it to resume stalled nuclear disarmament talks.