South highlights differences at Korea summit

South Korea’s president reported differences between the two sides in historic summit talks today with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il, while Kim gave a signal that the meeting be extended for an extra day.

President Roh Moo-hyun – meeting Kim in the North Korean capital Pyongyang in only the second such summit in the history of the divided Koreas – said Kim took issue with Seoul’s actions regarding international talks on the North’s nuclear programme.

Roh said that Kim also had problems with the two countries’ joint industrial zone.

“We were candid and frank in engaging in the discussion,” Roh said at a lunch with the South Korean delegation after two hours of talks with Kim. “In some issues we did not share the same perceptions.”

However, when the two leaders resumed the meeting after lunch, Kim proposed that the talks be extended to Friday beyond their scheduled close tomorrow, South Korean presidential spokesman Yoon Seong-yong told reporters in Seoul.

It was later reported that South Korea declined the offer.

A pool report from South Korean reporters, which did not cite any source, said the meeting would end tomorrow and that the two leaders would announce an agreement that morning.

Earlier, Roh said the North “may not be too happy about the pace in which South Korea agreed to implement certain measures” at international arms talks on Pyongyang’s nuclear programme. Roh gave no details, but he was most likely to be referring to aid in exchange for disarmament.

Roh also said Kim had issues about the two countries’ joint industrial zone in the North Korean border city of Kaesong – one of the main achievements of the first-ever summit between the Koreas, held in June 2000. The South Korean leader has said he would seek this week to expand economic cooperation between the two sides.

However, Roh added: “What we would confirm was that we both had a firm commitment for peace, and a commitment towards change and to set a new direction for the future.”

As the summit started, Roh and Kim briefly mentioned recent floods in the North that left about 600 people dead or missing and tens of thousands homeless and prompted North Korea to delay the summit from its original August date.

Before the talks at a state guesthouse in Pyongyang, Roh presented the North Korean leader with gifts including a bookcase full of South Korean DVDs, featuring popular soap operas and productions starring Lee Young-ae, believed to be Kim’s favourite starlet.

Kim appeared animated and smiled repeatedly today as he greeted Roh – a contrast from his dour demeanour yesterday, when the two first met briefly at an outdoor welcoming ceremony after the South Korean president arrived by road in Pyongyang.

The summit comes amid a hiatus in separate international talks on North Korea’s nuclear programme, as the six countries involved consider a draft agreement requiring Pyongyang to disable its weapons facilities by the end of the year. It shut down its sole operating reactor in July.

The main US negotiator at those talks, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, said the US had approved the draft and that other countries at the arms talks – China, Japan, Russia and the two Koreas – were expected to approve it before it was made public in the next few days.

Once the agreement is signed, Hill said the reactor’s disabling could be started “in a matter of weeks” – rendering it unable to be easily restarted to make more plutonium for bombs.

Next year, the US wants the North to abandon its fissile material – paving the way for peace talks to finally formally end the Korean War.