JEJU: South Korea opened cabinet-level talks with North Korea on Wednesday with a plea to the communist state to return to six-party talks on its nuclear program at an early date.
South Korea's Unification Minister Chung Dong-Young, Seoul's chief delegate, said in his opening remarks that North Korea should quickly end a dispute over US financial sanctions imposed on North Korea. "We urged them to remove an obstacle to the sixth round of six-party talks as soon as possible," Kim Chun-Sig, spokesman for South Korea's delegation, said." Our side also called for the early resumption of six-party talks."
South Korea said the implementation of an agreement on ending North Korea's nuclear weapons drive reached at the fourth round of six-nation talks in September would spur inter-Korean cooperation, he added.
North Korea's chief delegate Kwon Ho-Ung, a cabinet councilor, made no immediate response. Instead he insisted that South Korea end all joint military exercises with the United States, Kim said. "There was no immediate answer from the North Korean side. They just listened sincerely to what our side said," he said.
Seoul and Washington, which stations 32,500 troops in South Korea, have been military allies for decades and regularly stage joint military drills aimed at deterring North Korean aggression. Pyongyang's long-term strategy of driving a wedge between the two allies has been eased by recent differences over the nuclear standoff between hardliners in Washington and Seoul's policy of reconciliation with North Korea. Chung is scheduled to travel Sunday to Washington for talks with policymakers there on the nuclear stalemate.
