As clarified in the March 14 statement of a DPRK Foreign Ministry spokesman, AA is not one that requires bilateral agreement to be rendered invalid from its peculiar nature and it will be naturally nullified if one side does not abide by it.

Signed on July 27, 1953, it was a transitional measure suggesting that all foreign forces be withdrawn from the Korean Peninsula in an aim to ensure lasting peace there.

It is an international practice to withdraw, after the end of a war, troops from a foreign country in order to thaw the hostile relations between the belligerent parties and put the bilateral relations on a normal track.

However, the U.S. concluded the "Mutual Defense Treaty" with south Korea, which stipulates permanent presence of its troops in south Korea, and has persistently committed actions going against AA over the past 60 years, keeping its military presence in south Korea.

In November 1953, it defined as its ultimate goal to prevent the spread of communism into south Korea by turning it into a military ally while maintaining the armistice regime until "pro-American unification" is achieved on the peninsula.

Accordingly, the U.S. deliberately ruptured the Geneva conference for a peaceful solution to the Korean issue in June 1954. It also turned down all proposals made by the DPRK government, including a proposal for conclusion of a peace treaty between the DPRK and the U.S. and a proposal for convening four-party talks aimed to replace the armistice agreement with a peace accord.

The U.S. turned south Korea into its biggest military base and nuclear arsenal in the Far East, intensifying DPRK-targeted war rehearsals year by year.

Since the U.S. war maneuverings against the DPRK, a belligerent party, have reached an extreme pitch, interwoven with persistent economic blockade, nobody can predict what and when would break out on the Korean Peninsula.

Now that it became clear that AA can not avert the outbreak of war on the peninsula, DPRK's decision that it will be no longer committed to AA is a self-defensive measure taken to cope with the possible war by the hostile forces.

Therefore, the U.S. assertion is little different from a thief crying for a thief.

The DPRK army and people will mete out stern punishment to the war maniacs who finally made AA ineffective.