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Two Koreas bid to revive high-level talks after nuke deal
AFP
SEOUL
Petroleumworld.com 02 15 06Officials from the two Koreas met Thursday for talks aimed at reviving a high-level dialogue suspended by the crisis over the North's weapons drive and opening the way for major aid shipments to resume.
The meeting at the North Korean border city of Kaesong came just two days after a landmark international deal under which Pyongyang agreed to disable nuclear facilities in return for aid and diplomatic concessions.
Any agreement to resume ministerial dialogue after seven months is expected to pave the way for shipments of rice and fertiliser worth millions of dollars from Seoul to its impoverished communist neighbour.
Seoul's delegation for the one-day talks is led by Lee Kwan-Se, an assistant unification minister.
"We hope to make substantive progress not only in a solution to the North's nuclear weapons programme, but also in the government's policy of peace and prosperity by resuming the cabinet-level talks," Unification Minister Lee Jae-Joung told the team before departure.
The ministerial talks, the highest-level regular dialogue channel, were suspended last July after North Korea's missile tests sparked international alarm.
Seoul also halted a shipment of 100,000 tonnes of fertiliser and 500,000 tonnes of rice. It maintained the suspension of regular aid shipments after Pyongyang in October tested a nuclear weapon for the first time.
Presidential security adviser Yun Byung-Se has said the resumption of food and fertiliser aid would be on the agenda when ministerial talks reopen.
"If inter-Korean relations are restored, we can discuss issues that are on hold now," unification minister Lee, in charge of relations with the North, told reporters.
Successful negotiations would enable the ministerial talks, the 20th since the first and only Korean summit in 2000, to be held in Pyongyang as early as late this month, according to officials.
The last meeting took place in South Korea's port city of Busan. The two nations usually take turns hosting the talks, Yonhap news agency said.
South Korea has hailed the nuclear deal, reached Tuesday in Beijing after six-party talks, as a turning point.
The North agreed to disable its nuclear facilities over an unspecified period in return for one million tonnes of heavy fuel oil and diplomatic concessions.
As an "initial action," Pyongyang will shut down its nuclear facilities at Yongbyon within 60 days and invite UN atomic inspectors back in. The shutdown will be rewarded with the first 50,000 tonnes of oil.
Conservative critics have questioned what they see as the Seoul government's rush to resume ties. The Dong-A Ilbo newspaper noted that it had requested the Kaesong meeting a day before the Beijing agreement was reached.
"While the government considers the outcome of this round of six-party talks as a success, and is hurrying to revive more dialogue with the North, other nations of the six-party talks, such as the US and Japan, remain doubtful," it said.
JoongAng daily said the Beijing deal aimed to offer step-by-step incentives to stop Pyongyang backsliding.
"The government seems to have decided that the agreement meets the conditions for a restart of rice and fertiliser shipments to the North, but it has reached this decision with unseemly haste," its editorial said.
AFP 15 0457 GMT 02 07
Copyright© 1999 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
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