THE United States will end its suspension of military drills on the Korean peninsula, the Pentagon has announced.

“We took the step to suspend several of the largest military exercises as a good faith measure,” Defence Secretary Jim Mattis told reporters.

“We have no plans to suspend any more.”

Mr Mattis, however, did not give any indication that exercises with allied forces in the region — which have angered Pyongyang in the past — would resume any time soon.

“We are not turning them back on,” he said.

“We are going to see how the negotiations go and then we’ll see.”

AT A STALEMATE
The US government’s diplomatic decision came after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s planned trip to North Korea last weekend was cancelled over reports he received what US officials deemed to be a belligerent letter from Pyongyang, The Washington Post revealed.

In the letter, North Korean officials warned the US that denuclearisation talks were “again at stake and may fall apart”, CNN reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

The letter was reportedly delivered directly to Mr Pompeo by the former head of North Korea’s spy agency, Kim Yong-chol, but it was not known how it was sent.

It stated that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s government felt that the process could not move forward.

“The US is still not ready to meet (North Korean) expectations in terms of taking a step forward to sign a peace treaty,” CNN reported the letter as saying.

The 1950-1953 Korean War ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty, leaving US-led UN forces technically still at war with North Korea.

The North has long made clear that it sees an official end to the state of war as crucial to lowering tensions on the Korean peninsula.

But the United States has been reluctant to declare an end to the Korean War until after North Korea abandons its nuclear weapons program.

CNN also reported that the letter mentioned that if a compromise could not be reached and the nascent talks crumbles, North Korea could resume “nuclear and missile activities”.

On Sunday, North Korea’s state media accused the United States of “double- dealing” and “hatching a criminal plot” but did not mention Mr Pompeo’s cancelled visit.

In cancelling Mr Pompeo’s trip, Mr Trump publicly acknowledged for the first time that his effort to get North Korea to denuclearise had stalled since his June 12 summit with Kim in Singapore.

US intelligence and defence officials have repeatedly expressed doubts about North Korea’s willingness to give up its nuclear weapons and they had not expected Mr Pompeo’s trip to yield positive results.

A South Korea presidential spokesman said he was not in a position to comment on the authenticity of the letter but acknowledged that talks between Washington and Pyongyang were in a stalemate.

“With North Korea and the US remaining stalemated, there is an even bigger need for an inter-Korea summit,” Kim Eui-kyeom, a spokesman for the presidential Blue House told a briefing.

South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in said this month his planned third summit with North Korea’s Kim next month would be another step towards the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula and an end to the Korean War.