UN body probes possible Koreas truce violation

[May 22, 2010]  SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- The United Nations Command launched a probe Saturday into whether the deadly sinking of a South Korean navy ship blamed on North Korea violated the Korean War truce agreement.

Pyongyang denounced the investigation as a "bogus mechanism."

Representatives from 11 countries - South Korea, United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, France, New Zealand, Turkey, Denmark, Switzerland, and Sweden - will review findings of a multinational investigation into the sinking and determine the scope of any North Korean armistice violations, U.N. Command spokesman Kim Young-kyu said.

An international team of civilian and military investigators declared Thursday that a North Korean submarine fired a homing torpedo on March 26, ripping the 1,200-ton Cheonan in two. Fifty-eight sailors were rescued, but 46 died - South Korea's worst military disaster since the 1950-53 Korean War.

Pyongyang has vehemently denied any role in the sinking and claimed that South Korea fabricated evidence to frame it.

North Korea had asked Thursday to send its own team to inspect the site of the sinking in the Yellow Sea. South Korea responded with a request to the U.N. Command's Military Armistice Commission, which oversees the truce, to conduct a probe separate from the multinational one.

"There is no justification to plug such bogus mechanism as the 'Military Armistice Commission' into the case as it was faked up by the south side," North Korea's National Defense Commission said, according to a statement carried by the official Korea Central News Agency on Saturday.

The statement again demanded that South Korea "immediately" and "unconditionally" accept the North's own team of investigators and "clarify the truth in the eyes of the world."

The criticism comes amid U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit to the region. Clinton is in China where she faces a diplomatic struggle to win Beijing's support for penalizing its ally North Korea over the ship sinking.

Results of the U.N. Command probe will be submitted first to its commander, U.S. Gen. Walter L. Sharp, and then to the United Nations, Kim said. He added it was not known if the results would be directly reported to the U.N. Security Council.

It was yet to be decided how long the probe will last, Kim said, but South Korea media reports have cited unnamed government officials as expecting the findings by early June.

[Associated Press; By SANGWON YOON]

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.