SEOUL, March 4 (Reuters) – North Korea’s foreign ministry on Sunday called on the United Nations to call for an end to joint military exercises by the United States and South Korea, saying they were only exacerbate tensions and threatened to spiral the situation out of control.
Military drills and rhetoric employed by allies “irresponsibly heighten the level of confrontation,” Kim Son Gyong, North Korea’s deputy foreign minister in charge of international organizations, said in a statement released by the agency. KCNA National Newspaper.
Washington and Seoul will conduct large-scale military exercises from March 13 to 23, representatives of the two countries said on Friday.
These maneuvers are intended to prepare joint response capabilities in the event of “a changing security environment, aggression from North Korea”.
“The United Nations and the international community should strongly call on the United States and South Korea to immediately end their provocative remarks and joint military exercises,” said Kim Son Gyong.
He regretted that the United Nations systematically keeps silent about these exercises, which present “an eminently aggressive character”.
Kim Son Gyong issued a statement last month in which he said that UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres had been “extremely biased” over the issue of Pyongyang’s missile tests.
(Reportage Josh Smith; version française Camille Raynaud)
