South Korean airlines announced plans to re-route flights well clear of North Korean airspace after the announcement, the latest in a series of threats which have raised tensions in recent weeks.

A statement on the North's official media said no one knows "what military conflicts will be touched off by the reckless war exercises" south of the border.

The North said it therefore could not guarantee security for South Korean civilian aircraft using North Korean airspace "and its vicinity" above the Sea of Japan, "in particular, while the military exercises are under way."

The US State Department described the comments as "distinctly unhelpful."

"The North Koreans should be... fulfilling their agreements under the six-party talks," aimed at disarming Pyongyang, State Department acting deputy spokesman Gordon Duguid told reporters in Washington.

The annual Key Resolve-Foal Eagle military exercises start Monday and last for 12 days. The North has repeatedly denounced it as a prelude to war, while the US-led United Nations Command (UNC) says it is purely defensive.

The North protests against the exercise every year but inter-Korean tensions are currently high, after the North on January 30 announced it was scrapping all peace accords with the South.

Seoul's troops are on alert for possible border clashes.

North Korea is also preparing to fire a rocket from a base overlooking the Sea of Japan for what it calls a satellite launch. Seoul and Washington say the real purpose is to test a missile that could theoretically reach Alaska.

South Korean officials held an emergency meeting late Thursday to discuss the threat, a senior transport ministry official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

They would meet again Friday morning before the government issues a statement, the official said.

He said about 30 South Korean or foreign flights, headed to or from the United States or Russia, daily pass through a Flight Information Region which is controlled by North Korea but is not part of its territory.

Korean Air said a message to change course was sent to a flight that took off from New York and was due to land at the country's main airport Incheon early Friday.

"All planes will be directed to fly further south over the Pacific Ocean when heading for or arriving from North America," a company spokesperson told Yonhap news agency.

South Korea's second-largest flag carrier, Asiana, said a flight from Chicago arriving early Friday would have to fly over North Korea's airspace.

Asiana said that once the government makes a formal request, all subsequent flights will take a circuitous route, according to Yonhap.

"Under the touch-and-go situation where the North and the South are in full combat readiness and level their rifles and artillery pieces at each other, no one can guess what will trigger off a war," said the North's statement.

Its military would respond to the "slightest provocation or its sign" on land, sea or in the air with "decisive and devastating blows at the aggressors."

On Friday generals from the North and the UNC are due to meet at the border village of Panmunjom to discuss ways to ease tensions.

A similar meeting was held Monday for the first time in almost seven years, but sources said the North used it to criticise the military drills.

The exercise will this year involve a US aircraft carrier, 26,000 US troops and more than 30,000 South Korean soldiers.

The North is angry at South Korea's conservative leader Lee Myung-Bak, who scrapped his predecessors' policy of offering virtually unconditional aid to Pyongyang.

Analysts say it may also be testing the resolve of the Obama administration and trying to strengthen its hand in future nuclear disarmament negotiations.

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