"Sacred War"

[1Admin]

By Jack Kim
SEOUL | Sat Jul 24, 2010 6:32am EDT

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea said on Saturday it would begin a "sacred war" against the United States and South Korea at "any time necessary" based on its nuclear deterrent, in response to "reckless" military exercises by the allies.
North Korea has driven tensions on the Korean peninsula to new heights after the South accused the North of sinking one of its warships in March, killing 46, and took steps to boost its defense including massive military drills with the United States.
Pyongyang customarily voiced shrill anger in the past when the allies conducted exercises, but U.S. officials said further provocations are possible, especially as the North tries to build political momentum for succession of power to Kim Jong-il's son.
U.S. and South Korean militaries begin large-scale naval and aerial drills on Sunday with a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier taking part and they have additional exercises planned in August.
"The army and people of the DPRK will start a retaliatory sacred war of their own style based on nuclear deterrent any time necessary in order to counter the U.S. imperialists and the South Korean puppet forces deliberately pushing the situation to the brink of a war," the North's National Defense Commission said.
DPRK is short for Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
"All these war maneuvers are nothing but outright provocations aimed to stifle the DPRK by force of arms to all intents and purposes," the powerful commission said in a statement carried by the North's official KCNA news agency.
It again denied that the country was behind the sinking of South Korea's corvette Cheonan, and said the planned military drills were "as reckless an act as waking up a sleeping tiger."
SIX-PARTY TALKS
Washington brushed off the latest threat and said it had no interest in getting into a war of words. "What we need from North Korea is fewer provocative words and more constructive action," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said.
The North escaped rebuke by the U.N. Security Council, which condemned the attack in a statement early in July without directly blaming the Pyongyang government.
An official speaking on the sidelines of a multilateral Asian forum in Vietnam last week said the U.S.-South Korean drills also violated the spirit of the U.N. statement, which called for dialogue to ease tensions.
North Korea has called for the resumption of six-party nuclear disarmament talks that it had boycotted since late 2008, a move analysts said was an attempt to put the Cheonan incident behind and win lucrative aid through a deal with the South, the United States, Japan, Russia and China.
North Korea again on Saturday said that it was prepared to engage in talks with regional powers and take strong physical actions against any sanctions.
"If the U.S. puts sword to us, we will put sword to them, which is how we counteract. We are ready for both talks and wars. We are not the one who would be surprised by military threats or sanctions," North Korean foreign ministry spokesperson said in a statement carried by KCNA.
The United States and South Korea have rejected the call and said Pyongyang must first prove that it is genuinely interested in change by first apologizing for sinking the Cheonan.
Following talks in Seoul on Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced fresh sanctions on North Korea aimed at freezing its assets earned from illicit activities including arms trade and cut off the flow of cash to its leaders.

[Patriotic Sheepdog]

US aircraft carrier ups pressure on NKorea.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/as_koreas...FpcmNyYWZ0Y2E-

BUSAN, South Korea – A massive nuclear-powered U.S. supercarrier readied Saturday for maneuvers with ally South Korea in a potent show of force that North Korea has threatened could lead to "sacred war."

The military drills, code-named "Invincible Spirit," are to run Sunday through Wednesday with about 8,000 U.S. and South Korean troops, 20 ships and submarines and 200 aircraft. The Nimitz-class USS George Washington, with several thousand sailors and dozens of fighters aboard, was deployed from Japan.

The North routinely threatens attacks whenever South Korea and the U.S. hold joint military drills, which Pyongyang sees as a rehearsal for an invasion. The U.S. keeps 28,500 troops in South Korea and another 50,000 in Japan, but says it has no intention of invading the North.

Still, the North's latest rhetoric threatening "nuclear deterrence" and "sacred war" carries extra weight following the sinking of a South Korean warship that killed 46 sailors. Seoul and Washington say a North Korean torpedo was responsible for the March sinking of the Cheonan, considered the worst military attack on the South since the 1950-53 Korean War.

The American and South Korean defense chiefs announced earlier in the week they would stage the military drills to send a clear message to North Korea to stop its "aggressive" behavior.

The exercises will be the first in a series of U.S.-South Korean maneuvers to be conducted in the Sea of Japan off Korea's east coast and in the Yellow Sea closer to China's shores in international waters. The exercises also are the first to employ the F-22 stealth fighter — which can evade North Korean air defenses — in South Korea.

South Korea was closely monitoring North Korea's military, but no unusual activity had been observed Saturday, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported.

North Korea, which denies any involvement in the sinking of the Cheonan warship, has warned the United States against attempting to punish it.

"The army and people of the DPRK will legitimately counter with their powerful nuclear deterrence the largest-ever nuclear war exercises to be staged by the U.S. and the South Korean puppet forces," North Korea's official news agency in Pyongyang quoted an unnamed government spokesman as saying. North Korea's official name is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Though the impoverished North has a large conventional military and the capability to build nuclear weapons, it is not believed to have the technology needed to use nuclear devices as warheads.

Its rhetoric regarding using nuclear deterrence was seen by most as bluster, but its angry response to the maneuvers underscores the rising tensions in the region.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced Wednesday, after visiting the Demilitarized Zone dividing the two Koreas, that the U.S. would slap new sanctions on the North to stifle its nuclear ambitions and punish it for the Cheonan sinking.

On Friday, the European Union said it, too, would consider new sanctions on North Korea.

The North's Foreign Ministry said Saturday that Pyongyang will further strengthen its nuclear deterrent and again mentioned "powerful physical measures" in response to the U.S. military provocations and sanctions.

In an apparent bow to China, the George Washington will participate in the exercise in the Sea of Japan, but there are no plans for it to enter the Yellow Sea for the subsequent exercises.

China, a traditional North Korean ally, has voiced concerns that military drills in the Yellow Sea could inflame tensions on the Korean Peninsula and also fears exercises too close to its own shores could breach Chinese security.

The George Washington had been expected to join in exercises off Korea sooner, but the Navy delayed those plans as the United Nations Security Council met to deliberate what action it should take over the Cheonan sinking.

The council eventually condemned the incident, but stopped short of naming North Korea as the perpetrator.

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Associated Press writer Kwang-Tae Kim in Seoul contributed to this report.


We got the USS George Washington sitting on their doorstep, along with other ships and submarines. I think it is a bluff like NKorea like to pull. Problem is you never know what K J Ill will do. I see him as a wild card card especially since he's been talking with Iran's "Ianutinthehead".