The United States says South Korea’s live-fire exercises are “perfectly legitimate” and do not pose a threat to North Korea.

State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters on Friday that the U.S. recognizes that South Korea is a sovereign country which has every right to train and exercise its military in its own self-defense.

He said the South’s exercises in the past, routine in nature, do not pose a threat to North Korea, adding that the responsibility for current tensions rests exclusively with North Korea.

Crowley then stressed that the North should not use any future exercise as justification to undertake further provocative actions.