DPRK snaps back at Seoul for jeopardizing ties

In the statement released through the Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), the committee said the campaign against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) launched by Seoul in the wake of the sinking of the Cheonan reached the height of its confrontation and war moves.

The authorities of the south side regard the accident as a golden opportunity for pushing north-south relations to a catastrophe, the statement said.

It warned that the Republic of Korea (ROK) was "seriously mistaken if it thinks it can weather its domestic crisis by misleading the public opinion through such trite campaign as straining the situation and bedeviling the inter-Korean relations."

ROK has violated the June 15, 2000 joint declaration and the October 4, 2007 declaration, pushing the inter-Korean cooperation to a collapse, the statement said.

At the end of the statement, the committee stressed stressed that the DPRK will never tolerate the confrontation and war moves of Seoul. If the south ignites a war together with the US, the DPRK will "mete out merciless and resolute punishment to the warmongers"; Kazinform cites China Daily. See www.chinadaily.com.cn for full version.