South Korea demands end to North's nuclear programme
Inter-Korean talks began in sombre mood today, with South Korea demanding that North Korea should scrap its nuclear weapons programme.
The communist state gave no immediate response, South Korean officials said.
The Cabinet-level talks in the North’s capital, Pyongyang, offered South Korea its first official opportunity to react to the secretive North’s stunning admission to the United States last week that it has a programme to enrich uranium to make nuclear weapons, in defiance of a 1994 agreement to abandon any such scheme.
“We demanded that North Korea faithfully honour all international agreements it has signed,” local pooled reports quoted Rhee Bong-jo, a South Korean spokesman, as saying after the first round of talks ended after 50 minutes.
“We also asked them to open dialogue with concerned countries and the international society and take convincing actions,” Rhee said in the pooled reports, which were distributed in Seoul as no foreign reporters were allowed to cover the talks.
Rhee said North Korean officials “just listened” to the South Korean demands and did not respond.
North Korea made its admission during talks with visiting US Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly in Pyongyang on October 3-5.
Kelly said yesterday in Seoul that Washington would try to muster “maximum international pressure” on North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons programme.
Rhee said the two Koreas had no plan for a further formal meeting today but instead would continue to discuss the nuclear issue in informal talks.
The talks, the eighth round between the rival Koreas since a historic inter-Korean summit in 2000, are scheduled to continue until Tuesday.
“Overall, the atmosphere of the talks was heavy but sincere,” Rhee said.
Other issues discussed today included a proposal to account for thousands of people missing during and after the 1950-53 Korean War.
Before starting full talks, the two chief delegates exchanged testy remarks in the presence of reporters, after the South Korean compared his mood over the nuclear issue to the rainy weather in Pyongyang.
“I feel heavy-hearted just like the weather,” chief South Korean delegate Jeong Se-hyun, was quoted as saying.
The chief North Korean negotiator, Kim Ryong Song, replied: “No matter what outside weather looks like, concerns would disappear if the North and South join hands and try to resolve problems.”
Jeong retorted that “warm” inter-Korean relations and ”frosty” international concerns would create problems, the pooled reports said.
“If there is a big difference in temperature, you can catch cold,” Jeong said.
Under the 1994 agreement, the energy-starved North was to abandon its suspected nuclear weapons programme in exchange for two modern, light-water reactors and 500,000 tons of fuel oil a year until the reactors were completed.
During the talks with Kelly, North Korean officials said they considered the agreement invalid because the reactors were not expected to be finished by 2003 as promised. The project has been delayed by funding problems and tension on the Korean Peninsula.
The New York Times reported on its Web site that Washington planned to scrap the 1994 agreement.
But a US State Department official said last night that no decision has been reached yet on the 1994 accord, and that the US wanted to consult its allies before making a decision on the pact.
On Friday, US officials said there were aspects of the agreement that the United States wants to preserve, including a United Nations-monitored freeze on a North Korean nuclear programme in the city of Yongbyon.
The North’s admission seriously challenged South Korean President Kim Dae-jung’s “sunshine” policy of engaging Pyongyang.
The South Korean government says dialogue is the best way to deal with concerns about North Korea, and the US has also said it will seek “a peaceful resolution” to the issue of nuclear weapons.
But critics say Kim’s policy panders to North Korea in return for little.
The Koreas were divided in 1945.
