US-S.KOREAN MILITARY DRILL COULD RESULT IN 'ACTUAL WAR': N.KOREA

SEOUL, Sunday (AFP)

NORTH Korea warned on Sunday that annual US-South Korean military exercises due to start this week and designed to deter any military threat from the Stalinist country could turn into "an actual war".

The North's cabinet newspaper, Minju Joson, said the week-long military maneuvers beginning on March 19 in South Korea should be called off.

"There is no guarantee that the large-scale joint military exercises will not go over to an actual war," Minju Joson said in a commentary carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

"The US and the South Korean authorities should immediately cancel their plan for the provocative joint military exercises against (North Korea)."

The commentary said North Koreans would "wipe out all the aggressors" in the event of war.

Officials in Seoul and Washington have said the military drills are "purely defensive" and intended to check on the state of the US-South Korean military alliance.

The exercises come amid new diplomatic efforts to bring Pyongyang back into six-nation talks aimed at persuading it give up its nuclear weapons program.

They involve some of the US troops based here, thousands of US soldiers from abroad and South Korean military contingents. The drills include mock battles aimed at evaluating command capabilities with troops mobilized for anti-commando operations and computer war games.

The USS Kitty Hawk, a US aircraft carrier based in Japan, will arrive in South Korea's southern port of Busan Monday for the exercises, the US military newspaper Stars and Stripes said Sunday.

Some 32,500 US troops are stationed in South Korea to help deter possible aggression from communist North Korea.

About 650,000 South Korean troops have been stationed against North Korea's 1.1-million-strong army on the Korean peninsula since the 1950-1953 Korean War.