North Korea seeks UN meeting on US-South Korea exercises

UNITED NATIONS – North Korea is warning that joint military exercises between South Korea and the United States are pushing the situation on the Korean peninsula "to the brink of a war" and is asking for an urgent meeting of the U.N. Security Council.

In a letter Tuesday to the council president, North Korea's U.N. Ambassador Jan Song Nam accused the United States of "creating the danger of war" with the annual exercise.

Jan said the Security Council has previously "unjustifiably ignored" several North Korean requests to put the U.S.-South Korean exercises on its agenda.

He warned that if it again ignored the North's request to discuss the exercises, the council will not only give up its responsibility for maintaining international peace and security but become "a political tool" of the United States.