North retracts Bae case invitation to U.S. envoy

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North retracts Bae case invitation to U.S. envoy

Published: 01 Sep. 2013, 21:39

North Korea said late Saturday it withdrew an invitation for a U.S. envoy to visit the country to discuss the fate of a jailed American citizen because U.S. military drills on the peninsula made humanitarian dialogue impossible.

Robert King, special envoy for North Korean human rights issues, was scheduled to go to Pyongyang last Friday on what the U.S. State Department called a “humanitarian mission” to secure the release of Kenneth Bae, a Korean-American who had been convicted of crimes against the North Korean state and is serving a 15-year hard labor sentence.

The North’s Foreign Ministry said military drills last week by the United States and South Korea involving a B-52 bomber flight over the peninsula was “the most striking manifestation of the offensive and aggressive nature” of the exercise.

“The U.S. thus beclouded the hard-won atmosphere of humanitarian dialogue in a moment,” an unnamed ministry spokesman said in a statement carried by the official news agency.

“Despite the fact that we clearly notified the U.S. side of this through the New York contact channel, it is something surprising that the U.S. is making irrelevant remarks that it was surprised by our action.”

The United States and South Korea staged the annual computer simulated drills last week that test the allies’ combined defensive readiness against North Korean aggression.

Reuters