Updated at 9.59am:
South Korea
denied on Monday a North Korean report saying Seoul had tried to stoke
tensions between the bitterly divided neighbours by infiltrating two
warships into the North's territorial waters.
Overnight, the North Korean navy said the South had sent the two combat
vessels across the disputed maritime border off the North Korean coast not
far from where the two navies clashed on June 29 with loss of life on both
sides.
''We warn
that the infiltration of the combat warships is a dangerous act which may
spark a new armed clash,'' the North Korean navy said in statement said
published late on Sunday by the North's official KCNA news agency.
''The provocation in the wake of the armed clash on June 29 is a
deliberate move to render the situation in the waters more strained,''
Pyongyang's navy command said.
But the South Korean navy denied the accusation.
''What the North said is totally fabricated and groundless,'' it said
in a statement.
It said there was a routine South Korean naval exercise on Sunday but
the warships stayed well inside South Korean waters, below a disputed
maritime border line.
The South Korean navy warned the North not to enter its waters and said
the North would be taught a lesson and bear responsibility for any
consequences.
On Sunday, the South Korean Defence Ministry outlined its investigation
into the June 29 clash, in which four South Korean sailors were killed and
19 wounded. One sailor is missing. An unknown number of North Korean
sailors died.
The ministry said the North had repeatedly probed the South's defences
in the weeks leading up to the
clash.