North Korea threatens South over sea intrusion

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea accused the South on Thursday of sending naval vessels into its territorial waters off the west coast and warned of retaliatory action.

Seoul denied its vessels had intruded into the North's waters.

A spokesman for the North's Korean People's Army (KPA) naval command said in a statement South Korea has been sending a growing number of warships into its waters since May and the number had reached 36 by mid-June.

"Such reckless intrusion that has got unabated despite the repeated warnings of the KPA navy may become a dangerous fuse to spark off the third skirmish in the west sea and, furthermore, a bigger war going beyond the skirmish," the spokesman was quoted as saying by the North's official KCNA news agency.

"Even at this hour all the strike means (of North Korea) are fully ready to send all targets, big and small, intruding into its waters into the bottom of the sea any time," he said.

A South Korean military officer said the North's warning was unfounded. "There has been nothing of the sort," an officer at the Joint Chiefs of Staff's office said by telephone, referring to the North's accusation of naval intrusions.

The rich fishing grounds off the west coast of the Korean peninsula have been hotly contested by the two Koreas and have been the scene of naval clashes in 1999 and 2002 that killed scores of sailors on both sides.

Senior military officers have met across the border since then to try to defuse tensions and have set up a hotline between their naval commands.

South and North Korea are still technically at war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce and no peace treaty has been signed.