North Korea on Friday urged South Korea to halt its annual joint military exercises with the US, claiming that the fate of inter-Korean relations hinges on the matter, Seoul's Yonhap News Agency reported. "If (the South Korean government) truly wants North-South talks and improved ties, it should demonstrate its sincerity by taking actual action to stop all the war rehearsals against North Korea," the Rodong Sinmun newspaper, an organ of the North's ruling Workers' Party of Korea, said in a commentary. "If the war rehearsals targeting North Korea continue, they will escalate distrust and animosity between the North and the South and increase the risk of a nuclear war and this will not be allowed," according to the newspaper, which was monitored in Seoul. Last week, the North suggested to the US that it will temporarily suspend its nuclear tests if the US halts the joint military exercises with South Korea this year. The US immediately dismissed the proposal, labeling it as an "implicit threat." North Korea has long denounced any joint military drills between the allies, accusing them of conducting a war rehearsal targeting the communist nation.
The war drills reflect the US' scheme for nuclear war provocations on the peninsula and they will eventually result in the disaster of a nuclear war in the region, the newspaper column also noted.