N. Korea Denounces U.S.-South Korea War Drill

Kim expressed regret over what he described as Seoul’s bid "to stage nuclear war exercises against the fellow countrymen in league with outsiders to bring dark clouds of a nuclear war" to the Korean peninsula, the Unification Ministry said in a statement.

"Now that your side is planning to stage war exercises against the North together with the U.S., we feel deep apprehension as to whether the itineraries of inter-Korean relations agreed upon by both sides would be implemented properly," Kim said in the message released Friday.

North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) spoke more bluntly in a dispatch late Thursday.

"We consider it necessary for your side to…. make a responsible decision to immediately cancel the projected Ulji Focus Lens and reinforcement and deployment of the U.S. forces, which would aggravate the situation and drive it to the brink of war," it said.

The United States and North Korea have been locked in a standoff since October over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons drive.

The drill is the biggest of the U.S.-South Korean combined forces command’s annual military exercises, largely focusing on a computerized war game involving both South Korean troops and U.S. forces.

South Korea is home to some 37,000 U.S. troops.

Since a landmark inter-Korean summit in 2000, North and South Korea have been engaged in a series of joint projects, including rebuilding cross-border railways and roads severed since the Korean War.

They are also working to construct an industrial park in the North Korean city of Kaesong, near the inter-Korean border.

The two Koreas have remained technically at war since their 1950-1953 conflict which ended in an armistice, rather than a peace treaty.

North Drops Demand For One-On-One Talks
On the political front, South Korea said Friday that North Korea had agreed to drop its demand for one-on-one talks with the United States and to open six-way talks on the nuclear crisis.
"North Korea expressed its intention to accept six-party talks directly without going through three-way talks or bilateral talks," Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-Hyuk told a news briefing.
South Korea, Japan, China, the United States and Russia will participate in the talks and all received notices at the same time from North Korea of its intention to accept the six-party talks proposed by the United States.
"North Korea told South Korea last night directly of its intention to accept six-way talks," Foreign Ministry spokesman Kim Sun-Heung said.
"All countries were informed at the same time."
The first public word of the agreement came from the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow which issued a statement on North Korea’s decision late Thursday.
Officials in Seoul said there was no word of when the talks would take place though a senior U.S. official speaking in Washington said they could take place as early as next month.
South Korean Foreign Minister Yoon Young-Kwan met with U.S. ambassador to Seoul Thomas Hubbard to discuss the developments in the nuclear standoff but they declined to comment on the contents of their discussions.
Talks Soon

In Moscow, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Yury Fedotov was quoted by the Interfax news agency, as saying Friday that Russia expects six-nation multilateral talks on the North Korean nuclear crisis to begin in the near future.

"Russia welcomes the concrete step taken by the North Korean leadership, which opens the way to a resolution of the problem (surrounding North Korea) on the basis of talks with the most interested parties," Fedotov said.

"We expect that such talks will begin in the near future," he said.

Washington Waits

For its part, the United States is waiting for details from China about the six-nation talks, a Japanese official said Friday.

In meetings with top Japanese foreign ministry officials Friday, U.S. arms control envoy John Bolton said recent indications that showed Pyongyang was opening up to talks were encouraging but that no details, including their timing, were clear.

"He said he was awaiting further news from Beijing," a foreign ministry official said after the talks Bolton held with senior vice-minister Toshimitsu Motegi and vice minister Yukio Takeuchi.

"Given the time difference (with Washington), he said he was looking forward for further developments even today," the official said.

Australia Welcomes
Meanwhile, Australia welcomed Friday news that North Korea had agreed to multilateral talks on the standoff over its nuclear weapons program.

"If that is the case, and we are still awaiting confirmation, it is very good news," Prime Minister John Howard told reporters in Perth.

"It is very much in line with the diplomacy that Australia has been pursuing, and it shows a welcome intervention by China, which is something I have advocated consistently," he said.