US must freeze military exercises to de-escalate tensions with North Korea: Analyst

The United States must freeze all kinds of military exercises and deployment of weapons on the Korean peninsula to de-escalate heightened tensions with North Korea, an American foreign policy analyst says.

James Jatras, a former Senate foreign policy adviser in Washington, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Saturday while commenting on reports that the United States does not plan to pause a joint annual military exercise with South Korea during the upcoming Winter Olympics in the Asian country.

South Korea will host the Olympics in February amid rising tensions with North Korea.

Seoul and Washington usually hold their two annual military drills, called Key Resolve and Foal Eagle, in March and April, with some 17,000 American troops and more than 300,000 South Korean soldiers participating in the exercises.

Pyongyang is highly critical of those exercises, considering them preparations to invade the North. In response, it has been developing its weapons programs.

US Defense Secretary James Mattis said on Friday night that the United States will not change its military exercise schedule because of international concerns.

Jatras said, “It’s unfortunate that we see reports now that the United States has not planned to pause the military exercises near the Korean peninsula in conjunction with the Olympic Games in February in South Korea.”

“I think it would be good idea to pause these exercise even the games were not taking place. The only viable passport to de-escalation in my opinion is something like mutual freeze of exercises and deployment of weapons on the Korean peninsula in exchange for North Korean freeze on its missile and nuclear program,” he added.

“And that doesn’t seem to be happening, and it doesn’t seem that anybody in Washington is going to entertain that. And the fact that they are going to continue these exercises even during the Olympics at a time when security is going to be a great worry, it makes no sense at all,” the analyst stated.

Earlier this month, North Korean state-run media described a joint exercise between the US and South Korea as a naval blockade against the North and warned that it would take "merciless self-defensive" measures.

The blockade, it added, would be a "wanton violation" of the country's sovereignty and dignity, and it accused the US president of taking an "extremely dangerous and big step towards the nuclear war" by seeking such an extreme measure.

While North Korean leaders have denounced the joint military activity, which sometimes also involves Japan, as rehearsals for an invasion, the US and the South insist that the practices are defensive in nature.

Tensions between the two sides peaked earlier this month, when the US and its allies launched large-scale joint aerial drills in the Pacific, which involved more than 230 aircraft, including six F-22 Raptor stealth fighters.

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