SEOUL: North Korea on Monday said US and South Korean war games that started at the weekend could bring a halt to an international disarmament deal aimed at ending the secretive state's nuclear arms programme.

“(These war games) clearly show that the United States continues to pursue its hostile policy of squeezing our republic to death,” its KCNA news agency quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying.

“This nuclear threat won't work with us but will only put the brakes on the denuclearisation process on the Korean peninsula,” the spokesman was quoted as saying.

North Korea has missed an end of 2007 deadline to give a complete inventory of its nuclear arms programme as agreed under a deal with regional powers.—Reuters