U.S. manoeuvres leading to ‘nuclear disaster’: N. Korea

North Korea warned Monday that U.S.-South Korean military exercises, which it called “the most undisguised nuclear war manoeuvres,” are driving the Korean Peninsula and northeast Asia toward “nuclear disaster.”

The North Korean ambassador to the United Nations, Ja Song-nam, said in a letter to the UN Security Council that the U.S. is using nuclear-propelled aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, nuclear strategic bombers and stealth fighters in the joint exercises that began Wednesday.

“It may go over to an actual war,” Ja warned of the military drills, “and, consequently, the situation on the Korean Peninsula is again inching to the brink of a nuclear war.”

The letter was sent a few hours after North Korea fired four banned ballistic missiles, in apparent reaction to the U.S.-South Korean exercises. Three of them landed in waters that Japan claims as its exclusive economic zone, South Korean and Japanese officials said.

The United States and Japan, in consultation with South Korea, requested an urgent Security Council meeting on the launches, the U.S. Mission to the United Nations said. The closed consultations will take place Wednesday morning after the Security Council returns from a visit to four Boko Haram-affected countries in Africa, the mission said.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the tests, calling them a violation of council resolutions and reiterating his call for North Korea’s leaders “to refrain from further provocations and return to full compliance with its international obligations,” UN deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said.

Ri Song Chol, a counsellor at North Korea’s UN mission, told the Associated Press the missile launches were a continuation of leader Kim Jongun’s efforts “to strengthen our self-defensive military forces and pre-emptive attack capabilities” in response to “nuclear threats and blackmails” and the U.S.-South Korean military exercises.

He accused the U.S. of spurring the North to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile and reiterated a Foreign Ministry statement issued Jan. 8 that an ICBM would be launched “in any time and in any place decided by our supreme leadership.”

Ri said the current joint military exercises are “for pre-emptive strike to the DPRK” — the initials of the country’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. He said that is in contrast to previous annual exercises that the U.S. and South Korea called preventive and defensive.

Ja, the ambassador, again urged the Security Council to discuss the U.S.-South Korea exercises and warned that if it ignores North Korea’s request, as it has in the past, it will demonstrate the UN’s most powerful body is only a “political tool” of the U.S.