North Korea angry as S.Korea, U.S. start military drills

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean and U.S. forces began annual military drills on Monday, as a North Korean military spokesman denounced the exercises as a prelude to war and said they spoiled the prospects for nuclear disarmament talks.

The drills, called Ulchi Freedom Guardian, last until Friday and come as envoys in talks on ending the North's nuclear arms program discuss a mechanism to verify claims Pyongyang made about its production of arms-grade plutonium.

About 56,000 South Korean troops and 10,000 U.S. troops will join the exercises that test communication, computer and command systems, South Korean and U.S. military officials said.

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak led a meeting of his National Security Council on Monday in a secure basement bunker of the presidential palace as part of the drill, officials said.

"In our relationship with the North, there always exists the possibility of localized conflict, so we cannot afford to loosen our readiness," presidential officials quoted Lee as saying.

North Korea's official media on Monday quoted a military spokesman for the communist state as saying the drills were intended to start a war on the peninsula and stifle the North.

"The Korean People's Army will not stand idly by as the bellicose forces in the U.S. and the South mount the Ulchi Freedom Guardian as conservative U.S. hard-liners brand us a rogue state again and erase a series of progress made on denuclearizing the Korean peninsula," the spokesman said.

The United States has about 27,000 soldiers in South Korea to support the country's 670,000 troops. North Korea positions most of its 1.2 million troops near the border with the South.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz and Jack Kim; editing by Roger Crabb)