It called for the joint drill, which began in South Korea Tuesday, to be immediately halted, saying it would lead to the ``disgraceful destruction and death'' of troops.

The latest in a string of cautions came a day after more than 85,000 US and South Korean troops began their biggest joint war games here in six years to train for any attack by Communist North Korea.

``Owing to the dangerous war moves, the thick clouds of war are hanging over and a touch-and-go situation is prevailing in the Korean peninsula,'' the official Korean Central News Agency said, quoting a peace committee.

``The facts clearly show that `dialogue' and `peace,' `reconciliation' and `cooperation' on the lips of the US and the South Korean authorities are a lie and that they seek only confrontation and war,'' it said.

The Foal-Eagle '98 rear area manouevresbegan just three days after North and South Korea, the United States and China ended peace talks in Geneva with an agreement on procedures for continuing negotiations.

``They must not run amock but stop their reckless war moves at once,'' the Korean National Peace Committee said in a statement published in Pyongyang Tuesday.

``If they continue resorting to the anti-(North Korea) confrontation and war moves in despite of the condemnation and protest of all the Korean people and the world's peace-loving people, they will face only disgraceful destruction and death.''

KCNA continued the attack on Seoul in other dispatches monitored here Wednesday, saying South Korea was ``provoking'' the North by staging the exercises which Pyongyang describes as preparations for an attack.

It attacked Seoul's Defence Minister Chon Yong-Taek and Unification Minister Kang In-Duk for telling a parliamentary committee that North Korea could launch an attack on the South as it did in 1950.

KCNA said the statements were,``aimed at finding a pretext to unleash a war against the North.''

Some 50,000 South Korean and 35,000 US troops will take part in the Foal-Eagle War games which will continue for 12 days.

South Korea is also holding simultaneous separate drills, deploying tens of thousands of troops until October 30.