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No sign of imminent

N Korea attack

says UN command

SEOUL: The UN command said Sunday there was no sign of an imminent North Korean attack despite the communist nation's move in sending armed troops into a sensitive area of the Demilitarized Zone two days in a row.

"The combined and allied leadership see no other evidence of movement of troops or other military actions that would suggest any imminent threat," the command said. An estimated 260 North Korean troops riding in nine trucks entered the northern side of the joint security area at the border truce village of Panmunjom on Saturday night.

The defence ministry said the troops, armed with an 82-millimeter gun, five machine guns and four mortars, conducted an exercise to build defense positions. They stayed in the zone for three hours and 20 minutes in all.

The move prompted South Korean military authorities to issue a special alert on its side of the joint security area and ordered the nearby First Division to be ready to move and if necessary open fire, the spokesman said.

"These moves are in very serious violation of the armistice, but we continue to see no evidence of imminent hostilities or any change in the overall picture of military forces on either side of the DMZ," UN Command spokesman Jim Coles told AFP.

Coles stressed that the joint security area around the truce village of Panmunjom was the only place along the 151 mile-long (243-kilometer) demarcation line where unusual activity had taken place.

Elsewhere "There is no change at all," he said, underlining that at no time did the North Koreans in the joint security area attempt to cross into the South side.

"These (incidents) are the exclamation points to the statements they have been making for two years," he added referring to the North Korean army repudiation of the Armistice Agreement in April of 1994.

It was the second time in as many days that North Korea sent armed troops to the area in an apparent move to pressure Washington to agree to open high-level military talks and sign a peace treaty to replace the current armistice.

The armistice agreement bans all but side arms in the joint security area.

On Saturday, Colonel John Reitz of the UN command told journalists the number of troops who entered the area on Friday "clearly exceeded" the 30 enlisted men and five commissioned officers allowed in the area under the armistice accord at any one time.-AP