SEOUL – South Korea agreed yesterday to a North Korean offer of high-level military talks, a major breakthrough in the crisis on the peninsula which improves the prospect of renewed aid-for-disarmament negotiations.
Hours after US president Barack Obama and Chinese president Hu Jintao stood shoulder to shoulder in Washington decrying the North’s nuclear aspirations, Pyongyang bowed to Seoul’s demands for talks about two deadly attacks last year.
Washington and Beijing have argued that North-South dialogue is a prerequisite to a resumption of six-party talks involving the two Koreas, the US, China, Japan and Russia.
Pyongyang walked out of the aid-for-disarmament talks in 2009, pronouncing them dead.
A South Korean defence ministry spokesman said it had not been decided whether the inter-Korean talks would be held at ministerial level, as suggested by Pyongyang in a dispatch to the South Korean capital.
A unification ministry official said Pyongyang had ceded to South Korean demands to specifically discuss the sinking of one of Seoul’s warships in March, which killed 46 sailors, and the North’s attack on an island in November, which killed four people.
The attacks, along with the North’s revelations of advances in a uranium enrichment programme which open a second route to making a nuclear bomb along with its plutonium work, pushed tensions on the peninsula to their highest level in years.
“The government also plans to propose high-ranking talks on denuclearisation,” the defence ministry spokesman said, adding that Seoul had agreed to the North’s proposal for preliminary talks.
As part of its demands for inter-Korean dialogue, Seoul said North Korea must show sincerity on denuclearisation, as agreed under a 2005 deal.
US defence secretary Robert Gates last week held out the possibility of a resumption of six-party talks if North Korea ceased provocations and met its obligations. – (Reuters)