S. Korea, US start war games at sea

The United States and South Korea launched a major naval exercise involving a nuclear-powered US aircraft carrier in the Sea of Japan despite North Korea's threats of nuclear retaliation.

The war games - which began yesterday - is the first in a series intended "to send a clear message to N. Korea that its aggressive behaviour must stop," US Defence Secretary Robert Gates and South Korean Defence Minister Kim Tae-Young have said.

Seoul and Washington, citing the findings of a multinational investigation, accuse Pyongyang's communist regime of torpedoing a South Korean warship near the tense Yellow Sea border in March.

North Korea denies involvement in the sinking of the Cheonan, which claimed 46 lives.

The US-led United Nations Command said the four-day drill would involve about 20 ships, including the aircraft carrier USS George Washington, and some 200 fixed-wing aircraft.

Around 8,000 service personnel from the two allies were to take part.

"The USS George Washington left the southern port of Busan around 7 a.m. yesterday. It's sailing towards the Sea of Japan (East Sea) for the exercise," a US military spokesman said.

Officials at Seoul's defence ministry said other navy ships had also left Busan and the nearby port of Jinhae for the drill, with some from the US 7th Fleet set to join them off the peninsula's east coast.

The ministry has said the drill had been relocated from the sensitive Yellow Sea to the Sea of Japan, also known as the East Sea, in deference to Chinese protests.

But future drills would be held in both seas.

North Korea, which has routinely criticised US-South Korean drills as a rehearsal for war, denounced the exercise as "very dangerous sabre-rattling" and threatened to respond with nuclear weapons at the weekend.

Minju Joson, a newspaper published on behalf of the North's Cabinet, yesterday took note of the exercises, which it said were being conducted by "the US imperialists and the South Korean puppet warmongers."

The newspaper also repeated a warning of nuclear retaliation made by Pyongyang's top defence body a day earlier.

"The army and people of the DPRK (North Korea) will take strong retaliatory measures with dignity by dint of their powerful nuclear deterrent, as a spokesman for the DPRK National Defence Commission had declared," it said.

"They will start Korean-style sacred war for retaliation any time they deem it necessary."

Earlier, Washington urged the North to tone down its "provocative" statements.