North Korea said this morning it was postponing planned economic cooperation and maritime talks with South Korea because of Seoul's military alert posture during the Iraqi war.
North Korea's chief delegate to the inter-Korean economic cooperation committee, Pak Chang-Ryon, said in a statement that the North had to postpone indefinitely the economic talks and maritime talks scheduled for the coming week.
He accused the South of putting its military on a high alert posture, dubbed defense readiness condition, against the North "under the pretext of the Iraqi war," according to North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency.
He also attacked the South for staging an annual joint military drill with the 37,000 US troops stationing here.
"The behaviour of the South Korean authorities is a rude perfidy to the dialogue partner and a reckless act of laying an artificial obstacle in the way of contacts and dialogue between both sides," he said.
"The South is to blame for this," he added.
Officials of the unification ministry in Seoul said the South had not yet been officially informed of the postponement.
The move came a day after Pyongyang accused Seoul of threatening behaviour that could destroy inter-Korean relations after South Korea backed the US war on Iraq and expressed worries about the North's nuclear weapons drive.
AFP