Koreas outline aid and co-operation accord
The Koreas were outlining agreements for aid and boosting cooperation at high-level talks scheduled to wrap up today, with the North Korean delegation also planning a rare meeting with South Korea’s president.
The encounter between South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun and the North Korean delegation, led by chief cabinet counsellor Kwon Ho Ung, follows a meeting last week in Pyongyang where a South Korean minister saw the North’s reclusive Kim Jong Il – who raised hopes of a breakthrough in his nuclear stand-off with the international community.
Kim said last week that the North could return to international disarmament talks as soon as next month if the communist nation gets appropriate respect from the US. It has been a year since those talks last convened June 23, 2004, with the North refusing to return citing “hostile” US policies.
The timing for the meeting with Roh and the inter-Korean talks to resume today was uncertain, as lower officials from both sides worked on a joint statement.
As the talks opened yesterday, South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young urged the North to make good on Kim’s pledge and rejoin the nuclear negotiations in July.
The North has insisted at earlier negotiations with the South that the nuclear issue can only be resolved with Washington. But Chung pleaded with the North Koreans to also address the issue in the Seoul meetings.
“Let us put down every matter on the table and wash away the concerns of the public. Let’s achieve peace and prosperity,” Chung said yesterday.
The nuclear stalemate “is a matter between the two Koreas as well as an international one”, he said, according to officials.
North Korea repeated at the talks in Seoul that it doesn’t need any nuclear weapons if Washington would drop its allegedly hostile policies toward the North.
Meanwhile, the main US envoy on the North Korean nuclear issue said he would be interested in meeting the North’s reclusive leader – labelled a “tyrant” by US President George Bush.
“I’m more than willing to meet Chairman Kim Jong Il and hope to meet him,” US Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said in a message posted yesterday on a website run by the US Embassy in Seoul.
Also yesterday, the US State Department said Washington will provide 50,000 tonnes of food to North Korea in a humanitarian decision that the Bush administration said is unrelated to efforts to convince Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons programme.
