SEOUL, July 11 (Reuters) - North Korea condemned the United States and its allies on Saturday for what it called strengthening military blocs and ‌accelerating arms buildups after a NATO summit this week.

Pyongyang accused NATO leaders ‌of portraying North Korea's exercise of its legitimate sovereign rights as a threat, the foreign ministry said ​in a statement carried on state media KCNA.

The alliance demonstrated a stronger commitment to bloc-to-bloc confrontation through increased arms spending and closer military cooperation with allies in the Asia-Pacific region, the ministry said.

At the NATO summit in Turkey on Tuesday, officials announced more ‌than $50 billion in military procurement ⁠and industrial agreements as European allies face continued pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump to shoulder a greater share of the ⁠alliance's defence burden.

President Lee Jae Myung of Pyongyang's rival South Korea said on the sidelines of the summit that he hoped Seoul would expand cooperation with NATO allies in ​research and ​development, including in cutting-edge technologies, and in ​production of weapons systems.

North Korea ‌said the summit showed that NATO was a body geared towards war and confrontation, pursuing what Pyongyang described as exclusive geopolitical interests at the expense of peace and security in Europe and the Asia-Pacific.

Pyongyang, which says a push by the West for it to abandon nuclear weapons has been irreversibly terminated, believes instead that denuclearisation ‌efforts should focus first on what it described ​as attempts by South Korea and Japan to ​pursue their own nuclear weapons under ​U.S. protection, as well as the nuclear ambitions of NATO ‌members participating in the alliance's nuclear-sharing arrangements, ​the ministry said.

It ​said North Korea would safeguard its sovereignty and security interests, as well as regional peace, through the responsible exercise of its sovereign rights.

KCNA said on ​Friday that North Korea had ‌decided on measures to strengthen its nuclear forces "quantitatively and qualitatively" as leader ​Kim Jong Un calls for modernising its military.

(Reporting by Heekyong Yang ​and Joyce Lee; Editing by William Mallard)