North Korea denounced the launching of a joint military exercise between the United States and South Korea, warning that US hostility would only drive the North Korea to change its stance toward dialogue.

"We cannot but take a serious view of such a perfidious act of the US as staging provocative war maneuvers targeted against their dialogue partner after expressing its will not to invade the North Korea," said a spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry.

"Dialogue and confrontation can never go together," he said, adding that "if the US persistently incites confrontation and pursues dialogue as a smokescreen to cover up it, this will also compel the North Korea to change its stand toward dialogue."

"The fact that the US launched the military exercises on the eve of the resumption of the six-party talks that had gone into temporary recess cannot be construed otherwise than an attempt to force the North Korea to accept its unjust demand," he said.

"We have shown utmost magnanimity and flexibility with regards to the issue of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula, but we will never do such a thing as yielding to anyone's pressure and abandoning our sovereign right," he said.

"The US is sadly mistaken if it calculates it can get any concession from the North Korea by military pressure or high-handed practice," he said.

"North Korea is closely following all the developments," he added.

Pyongyang has reiterated its stance against the US-South Korean joint military exercise, called "Ulji Focus Lens-05," which began on August 22.

Delegates from China, North Korea, the US, South Korea, Russia and Japan will gather in Beijing next week to resume the nuclear talks in a bid to settle the nuclear issues on the Korean Peninsula.

(Xinhua News Agency August 25, 2005)