Asia-Pacific

US supports SKorea's response on warship

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-05-24 21:54

WASHINGTON - U.S. President Barack Obama "fully supports" South Korea's response to the sinking of one of its warships, the White House said Monday.

"U.S. support for South Korea's defense is unequivocal, and the president has directed his military commanders to coordinate closely with their Republic of Korea counterparts to ensure readiness and to deter future aggression," the White House said.

The South Korean government said Monday it will hold military drills aimed at deterring what it calls further aggression by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), and will put on hold all exchanges and trade with Pyongyang.

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A few hours earlier, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak said his country will resort to self-defense measures in case of further military provocation from Pyongyang over the sinking of the South Korean warship in late March, which killed 46 sailors near a disputed maritime border between the two countries.

International investigators have earlier concluded in Seoul that the South Korean navy warship was torpedoed by a DPRK submarine and the torpedo was manufactured in the DPRK.

Condemning the DPRK for violating the United Nations Charter and the Korean War Armistice Agreement, Lee said his government will refer the incident to the UN Security Council.

However, the DPRK National Defense Commission rejected as a "fabrication" the South Korean claims that its warship was torpedoed by a DPRK submarine, the DPRK's KCNA news agency reported.

"It (South Korea) finally announced the results of the joint investigation based on a sheer fabrication, which assert that the warship was sunken by our torpedo attack, in a bid to mislead the public opinion," the KCNA quoted a spokesman for the National Defense Commission as saying.

The spokesman also warned that the DPRK will take tough countermeasures, including an all-out war if new sanctions are imposed on the country.

Also on Monday, the DPRK warned that if South Korea installs propaganda loudspeakers along the border line, the DPRK military would fire at and destroy them.

According to the KCNA, the commander of forces of the Korean People's Army (KPA) in the central sector of the front issued an open warning to the South Korean authorities that if the South refused to remove the anti-DPRK posters and loudspeakers set up along the Military Demarcation Line, the KPA would "start the firing of direct sighting shots to destroy them."

The commander stressed that if South Korea continued challenging the DPRK with such moves, the KPA will "eliminate the root cause of the provocations with a stronger physical strike."

The two Koreas reached a deal in June 2004 that obliges the two sides to stop all propaganda campaigns against each other, including using loudspeaker broadcasting and slogan boards, from August 15 of that year.

But since the sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan, tensions have notably escalated between the two countries.