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WASHINGTON -- The United States played down North Korean missile launches Friday, calling them a routine exercise.

White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said the United States sees the several short-range guided missiles the North lobbed into the sea that separates it from Japan "as a routine exercise that they do from time to time."

U.S. officials, eager to make progress on a nuclear disarmament accord with the North that has been stalled over a financial dispute, have been hesitant to criticize Pyongyang.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called the tests "extremely regrettable" but said his country does not consider them a serious threat to national security.

At the State Department, deputy spokesman Tom Casey said he did not believe that the tests had any particular implications for the six-party nuclear disarmament process.

"I don't think it causes any fundamental shift in either their (North Korea's) military posture or anyone else's," he said.

Casey added that the tests have no apparent effect on the moratorium that North Korea has imposed on long-range missile tests.

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