- SEOUL (Reuters) - South and
North Korean border guards briefly exchanged fire across the world's most
heavily armed frontier Tuesday, but there were no reports of injuries,
a South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman said.
-
- The exchange of fire was the first this year, the spokesman
added by telephone.
-
- Incidents are unusual but not unprecedented along the
so- called Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), which is guarded on both sides by
a total of some 1.8 million troops, including many of the 37,000 U.S. troops
stationed in South Korea.
-
- "At about 11:40 this morning, that side fired two
or three shots and our border guards returned fire," the spokesman
said.
-
- "It was over in an instant," he added of the
exchange near the border village of Paju, 25 miles northeast of the South
Korean capital Seoul.
-
- No one was wounded and the area was calm, he said.
-
- North Korea did not issue an immediate comment on the
incident, but its state media said the South had "committed a military
provocation by introducing two combat armored cars into the Demilitarized
Zone" Monday.
-
- The report by the North's state-run Korea Central News
Agency (KCNA) followed several state broadcasts last week accusing the
South of deploying 105 mm howitzer artillery in the zone.
-
- That report was dismissed by South Korea, which said
the South's military does not have that weapon in its arsenal.
-
- Capitalist South Korea and the communist North have been
in a technical state of war since the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in
an armed truce that has not been replaced by a peace treaty.
-
- In September, South Korea fired warning shots to repel
North Korean soldiers on two consecutive days when North Korean soldiers
strayed across the midpoint of the DMZ.
-
- Local media said the South Korean government had tried
to keep that incursion quiet to avoid derailing delicate reconciliation
talks between the rival Koreas. Those talks have since been suspended.
-
- Tuesday's exchange of fire comes as the United States
has intensified its scrutiny of North Korea's suspected weapons of mass
destruction, including biological war capabilities, as part of U.S. efforts
to combat terrorism.
-
- President Bush told reporters Monday that Washington
wanted North Korea to allow inspectors to determine whether they have been
producing weapons of mass destruction and to "stop proliferating"
such weapons.
-
- http://news.excite.com/news/r/011127/00/international-arms-korea-dc
|
