Published time: March 11, 2013 22:02
The armistice ending the Korean War in 1953 is still valid, the United Nations has stressed, despite North Korea’s decision to scrap the agreement that has ensured stability in the peninsula for six decades.
“Let me just stress here that the armistice agreement is still valid and still in force,” UN spokesman Martin Nesirky said Monday. “The terms of the armistice agreement do not allow either side, unilaterally, to free themselves from it.”
Earlier North Korean state media announced that the decades-old ceasefire was “completely invalid,” and that the country had cut its communications hotline with the south, an action later confirmed by South Korea’s Unification Ministry.
UN leader Ban Ki-moon believes that the 60-year-old armistice remains a “critical” document, said Nesirky.
Ban is calling on Pyongyang “to continue to respect the terms of the armistice agreement as it was approved by the General Assembly,” the spokesman added.
The decision by the North to scrap the accord comes in retaliation to the joint South Korean-United States military drills that kicked off on Monday.
The start of the two-week “Key Resolve” maneuvers follows a week of rising tensions in the peninsula, with North Korean threats of a nuclear showdown following UN sanctions adopted after its third atomic test in February.
