N. Korea blames U.S.-South Korea military exercise for delay in talks

SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea blamed joint military drills conducted by the United States and South Korea for a delay in the resumption of nuclear disarmament talks, the North’s Communist Party newspaper reported Saturday.

The weeklong military exercises, which ended Friday, were “derailing the resumption of six-way talks,” the newspaper Rodong Sinmun said in a commentary also carried by North Korea’s official news agency, KCNA.

“The U.S. does not want either improvement of the relations with (North Korea) and a solution to the nuclear issue … but intends only to invade by force of arms.”

North Korea has repeatedly denounced the annual exercises as preparations for a pre-emptive attack against its hardline regime and said it would build a nuclear arsenal to deter such an attack.

Washington says it has no intention of invading and has urged the North to return to the multilateral nuclear disarmament talks.

Last month, the North’s government claimed it had nuclear weapons. International experts believe the North does have enough radioactive material to make about a half-dozen nuclear bombs but has not performed any known nuclear tests that would confirm the claim.

The talks – involving the two Koreas, United States, China, Japan and Russia – have been stalled since June after three unsuccessful rounds in Beijing. A planned fourth round in September never took place because of the North’s refusal to attend, citing what it calls a hostile U.S. policy.

Also Saturday, the North accused Washington of dividing the two Koreas and called for a withdrawal of all U.S. troops from the South.

It said the North Korean Human Rights Act enacted in October in the United States is an “evil law” which creates more separated families and should be scrapped.

The United States has about 33,000 troops in South Korea as a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in a cease-fire, not a peace treaty, leaving the two Koreas technically still at war.