LOC13:24
10:24 GMT
TOKYO, Dec 16 (KUNA) -- South Korea's military plans to hold a live-fire
artillery drill this week or early next week on a front-line island devastated
by North Korea's bombardment on November 23, the first such maneuver on
Yeonpyeong Island since the attack, Seoul's Yonhap News Agency reported on
Thursday.
Some 20 military personnel from the US forces in South Korea will help
South Korean troops in the one-day drill, to be held between Saturday and
Tuesday, by providing medical, communications and intelligence support,
officials said.
Members of the Military Armistice Commission of the US-led United Nations
Command, which supervises the armistice agreement that ended the 1950-53
Korean War, will also observe the upcoming drill.
"The military decided to hold a one-day live-fire drill on Yeonpyeong
Island between December 18 and 21," Col. Lee Bung-woo, spokesman for the Joint
Chiefs of Staff (JCS), was quoted as saying. The JCS spokesman said artillery
guns in the planned drill will be aimed away from the North, as usual.
About 28,500 US troops are stationed in the South, a legacy of the Korean
War.
Meanwhile, the North said Thursday it supports dialogue aimed at defusing
regional tensions and denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula, but will "never
beg" for it, as New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson landed in Pyongyang.
North Korea's Foreign Ministry also accused the US of breaching trust in
the six-nation denuclearization-for-aid deal in 2005, reiterating its claim
that its uranium enrichment program serves a "peaceful" purpose. The
six-nation nuclear talks involve China, South and North Korea, the US, Japan,
and Russia.
"We support all proposals for dialogue such as six-party talks that arise
from the desire to prevent war on the Korean Peninsula and achieve
denuclearization, but we will never beg for dialogue," a ministry spokesman
said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
Richardson is on a private trip aimed at taming regional tensions sparked
by the North's November 23 bombardment that left four dead and 18 others
wounded.(end)
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KUNA 161324 Dec 10NNNN