PYONGYANG,
Sept. 15 (Xinhua) -- An official group of the Democratic People's Republic of
Korea (DPRK) on Friday accused South Korea of preparing a war against its
country, the official Korean Central News Agency reported.
The Committee for Peaceful Reunification of the
Fatherland, an official DPRK group, criticized South Korea for developing
"ultramodern weapons of various types" and setting up a new "command for guided
shells."
South Korea, who followed the United States, was
pursuing a hostile policy against the DPRK, said the statement.
"This dangerous arms build-up indicates that the
South Korean military bellicose forces are putting spurs to the preparations for
a war against the north," it said.
"We will never remain a passive onlooker to their
frantic preparations for a war against the north, but strongly react to them,"
it added.
Meanwhile, the leading official newspaper Rodong
Sinmun warned that the inter-Korean relations were heading toward an
"irreversible breakdown," due to South Korea's hostile policy.
The reaction came one day after U.S. President George
W. Bush's meeting with his South Korean counterpart Roh Moo-hyun in Washington,
with both sides calling on the DPRK to return to the six-party talks aiming at
resolving the nuclear issue on the peninsula.
The DPRK last month condemned an annual joint
U.S.-South Korea military drill, saying the exercises could lead to an actual war
and warning it had the right to take "preemptive" measures in self-defense.
Seoul and Washington said the exercises, which had
been held annually since 1975, were for defense.
Bush had linked the DPRK with Iran and Saddam
Hussein's Iraq as an "axis of evil."
Since the 1950-1953 Korean war, U.S. troops have been
stationed in the South.
This year's exercise, which concluded on Sept. 1,
involved 9,000 U.S. troops and an undisclosed number of South Korean soldiers.
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