SEOUL: North Korea warned its tough-talking neighbor Sunday against holding more firing drills near a disputed maritime border off the west coast of the peninsula, accusing the South of being “hell-bent to set off a war”. Seoul has sharply increased its rhetoric over the past week, prompted by growing protests and public opinion polls critical of the conservative government's perceived weak response to last month's deadly shelling of Yeonpyeong island. South Korea's military says it is preparing to stage more live-fire drills in the disputed area, possibly as soon as Monday, enraging Pyongyang, which said last month's attack was set off by a similar drill when the South fired artillery shells into its waters. The South said those drills were harmless and regular, and that they were conducted on its side of the so-called Northern Limit Line (NLL). Tensions have risen to their highest level in decades on the divided peninsula after the attack, which came days after the North's revelation it had made significant advances in its nuclear program. The foreign ministers of South Korea and Japan Sunday left for Washington to meet US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to discuss North Korea. They are expected to produce a statement condemning Pyongyang's actions. China, the North's only major ally and the chair of stalled international nuclear talks with Pyongyang, is not invited. However, the Washington troika are expected to discuss Beijing's proposal for emergency regional talks on the crisis. North Korea disputes the NLL near Yeonpyeong, a sea border established by the United Nations, without Pyongyang's consent, at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War. The South is “loudly advertising that they would fire shells into the territorial waters of the DPRK side from Yeonpyeong island, i.e. in the same direction they did when committing the recent provocation,” the North's KCNA state news agency reported.
