The statement said:

President Kim Il Sung clarified the Three Principles of National Reunification -- independence, peaceful reunification and great national unity -- as a great programme for reunification common to the Korean nation.

Leader Kim Jong Il provided the June 15 North-South Joint Declaration and the October 4 declaration based on those three principles.

The validity and vitality of the three principles were fully proved through the June 15 joint declaration and the October 4 declaration.

However, the U.S. and the south Korean Lee Myung Bak group of traitors have frantically intensified the moves to stifle the DPRK, totally negating the three principles of national reunification clarified in the July 4 joint statement and the June 15 joint declaration.

Recently, too, the U.S. imperialists and the Lee Myung Bak group staged the largest-ever joint live-shell firing drill in the area south of the Demilitarization Zone and perpetrated such reckless action as targeting the flag of the DPRK, pushing the situation on the Korean Peninsula to a touch-and-go one.

We strongly demand the U.S. imperialists and the south Korean puppet group halt war maneuvers and immediately roll back the reckless anti-DPRK hostile policy toward the DPRK.

The Lee group hell-bent on stoking the anti-north war fever in collusion with outsiders must step down without delay.

The U.S. should withdraw its troops for aggression from south Korea as early as possible for the peaceful reunification of Korea.

We will further intensify the movement to support the just struggle of the Korean people to reunify the country by themselves without foreign interference.