North Korea threatening to pull out of armistice

SEOUL, South Korea -- In an apparent attempt to force direct dialogue with the United States, North Korea threatened on Tuesday to abandon the armistice that ended the Korean War five decades ago, accusing Washington of planning an attack.

A spokesman of the North's Korean People's Army said "the situation on the Korean Peninsula is getting extremely tense" because of alleged U.S. plans to send in reinforcements and build a naval blockade to prepare for a pre-emptive attack. The nations are locked in a dispute over North Korea's nuclear program.

North Korea "will be left with no option but to take a decisive step to abandon its commitment to implement the Armistice Agreement and free itself from the binding force of all its provisions," said the unidentified spokesman, quoted by the North's state-run KCNA news agency.

Armed forces of the two Koreas were in the middle of their annual winter training. But South Korean and U.S. officials saw no immediate indication North Korea planned to launch a serious attack across the border.

State Department officials in Washington had no immediate reaction to the North's threat. A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, noted the Bush administration had said in the past it would not respond to threats or blackmail.

Even if Tuesday's announcement is largely symbolic, any change in the armistice -- the only existing legal instrument keeping an uneasy peace on the peninsula -- could greatly increase tensions and uncertainty.

The 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty, leaving the peninsula still technically at a state of war. The frontier is the world's most heavily armed with most of the nearly 2 million troops of both sides deployed near the border, including 37,000 Americans stationed in the South.

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