U.S. carrier in South Korea for drills that rile North

The USS Ronald Reagan arrives in Hong Kong harbour for a scheduled port visit March 7, 2007. The carrier arrived in South Korea on Thursday for annual joint military exercises days after North Korea said such drills poisoned international talks to end Pyongyang's pursuit of nuclear weapons.

SEOUL (Reuters) - A U.S. aircraft carrier arrived in South Korea on Thursday for annual joint military exercises which North Korea said were poisoning international talks to end its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

The USS Ronald Reagan and the guided-missile cruiser Lake Champlain arrived in the southern city of Pusan for the war games due to start on Sunday, according to a news release posted on the carrier's Web site (www.reagan.navy.mil/).

"The deployment of Ronald Reagan demonstrates the U.S. commitment to peace and stability in the Pacific region," it said.

Arrival of the ships came as regional powers were trying to persuade North Korea at six-way talks in Beijing to implement a agreement reached last month to start shutting down its main nuclear reactor in exchange for energy aid.

"These are very dangerous provocations casting (a) shadow over the implementation of an agreement adopted with much effort at the six-party talks on February 13 and the progress of the talks," Pyongyang's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying.

"Dialogue and sabre-rattling cannot go together," the unnamed spokesman said.

The nuclear talks ground to a halt on Thursday with North Korea refusing discussions and demanding that $25 million of its assets that had been frozen in a Macau bank for suspected use in illicit activity first be transferred to a bank in Beijing .

North Korea routinely criticizes the annual joint war games for raising tensions on the peninsula.

The United States keeps about 30,000 soldiers in South Korea to support the country's 670,000 troops. North Korea has a 1.2-million-strong military, most of whom are stationed near the heavily fortified border that divides the peninsula.

The two Koreas are technically still at war. The truce that halted the 1950-1953 Korean War never gave way for a peace treaty.