The Korean People's Army (KPA) of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Saturday strongly condemned the projected joint military exercises by South Korea and the United States.

"The US's aim is to wind up its preparations for preemptive attack on the DPRK and drive the situation on the peninsula to an extreme tension in a bid to block the positive process of reconciliation and cooperation between the north and the south and force the DPRK to accept the unjust demands raised by the US at the six-party talks," a spokesman of the KPA's Panmunjom Mission said in a statement.

"It is quite unjustifiable for the US side to stage such a large- scale provocative war exercise under the simulated conditions of an all-out war against the DPRK with huge forces and the latest war hardware involved," the spokesman added.

The spokesman said that the US side's action only bars the KPA from expecting anything from the dialogue with the United States and reinforces its judgment on building up force of self-defence to defend the country and its sovereignty.

"The KPA is fully ready to respond to a war in any time. We will closely follow the US side's war exercise with a high degree of vigilance and take a prompt decisive countermeasure," the spokesman said.

Source: Xinhua