Pyongyang, June 1 (KCNA) -- Kim Son Gyong, vice-minister of Foreign Affairs of the DPRK, released the following press statement titled "Dangerous sea intercepting drill escalating the regional tension" on June 1:

The U.S. and the south Korean puppets are persistently resorting to the saber-rattling against the DPRK despite deep concern and protest of the international community.

The U.S., which staged the actual nuclear war exercises Freedom Shield and "combined joint formation drill" in the light of its form and contents in March and April, is going to stage a sea intercepting drill together with Japan, south Korean puppets, Australia and other vassal forces according to the "Proliferation Security Initiative" (PSI) in the open waters off the South Sea of Korea in late May.

The U.S. cooked up PSI in 2003. In the past 20 years it has systematically expanded it and tried to use it as means for pressurizing the anti-U.S. independent countries.

It is illogical and mockery of the international law for the U.S., the world's biggest proliferator of WMDs and direct destroyer of international nuclear non-proliferation system, to talk about the control of someone's "WMD proliferation".

This is evidenced by the fact that the U.S. openly connived at Israel's possession of nukes and cooked up a nuclear proliferation mechanism called AUKUS to destroy the international nuclear non-proliferation system by itself.

It is just like a guilty party filing the suit first that the U.S., which has built bio-chemical weapon laboratories in south Korea, Ukraine and other regions and unhesitatingly spread WMDs to the whole world, is talking about "non-proliferation".

The main purpose of the U.S. that fabricated the PSI is to legalize unilateral maritime transport interception and blockade against those countries which are not obedient to it and thus realize its strategy for hegemony.

The U.S. and the south Korean puppet military are making far-fetched assertions that the drill is aimed at "defence" and "non-proliferation" but in view of the scale of the forces and the performance of equipment involved in the drill, it is quite clear that they are extremely dangerous military exercises for bolstering up the maritime operation capability with Japan and south Korean puppets in the Korean Peninsula and for perfecting the overall embargo on the export and preparations for preemptive attack on a specified state in contingency.

The drill is being staged at a time when the U.S. and the south Korean puppets are going to stage the largest-ever "combined joint fire annihilation drill" in particular, which adds to the gravity and danger of the situation.

The drill is being staged in the place adjacent to the sensitive waters where disputes over the issue of dominium continue. This shows that the sea intercepting drill has a multi-purpose nature to put pressure on the neighboring countries of the DPRK.

The recent drill will be a catalyst for escalating the tension in Northeast Asia as it is being staged at a time when the U.S. has recently shipped various types of warships into the Straits of Taiwan under the pretext of "freedom of navigation" and NATO member states continue to take part in the U.S.-led joint military exercises in the Asia-Pacific.

As the U.S. is steadily expanding the multi-national military cooperation frameworks such as PSI, the possibility of catastrophic military conflict in Northeast Asia is turning into reality day by day.

All the facts clearly prove once again that the U.S. is chiefly to blame for heightening tension and increasing the danger of a nuclear war in the Korean Peninsula.

If the U.S. and its vassal forces attempt to impose any hostile blockade on the DPRK or infringe upon our inviolable sovereignty even a bit, the armed forces of the DPRK will regard it as a declaration of war against it.

The U.S. should stop at once the hostile acts of destabilizing the situation in the Korean Peninsula, bearing in mind that the ceaseless and dangerous war gambles being staged before our eyes will result in leading it to self-destruction. -0-

www.kcna.kp (Juche112.6.1.)