North and South Korea pledged yesterday after ministerial talks to work together for the success of multilateral negotiations in late February on ending the beleaguered North's nuclear programs.
The Seoul meeting had been marked by testy exchanges that experts said showed Pyongyang felt increasingly cornered in the world community, especially following revelations this week that a top Pakistani scientist had sold it nuclear technology.
The two Koreas will join the US, China, Russia and Japan in the Chinese capital in a second round of six-party nuclear talks set to begin on Feb. 25.
PHOTO: AP
"South and North agreed to cooperate for a fruitful second round of six-party talks to resolve the nuclear issue peacefully," said a joint statement issued after three days of inter-Korean ministerial talks in Seoul.
The 13th set of Cabinet-level contacts since the capitalist South and communist North began their cautious reconciliation process four years ago began just hours after North Korea announced a long-awaited date for the six-way talks.
But the upbeat mood soon dissipated as the significance of the revelations from Pakistan sank in.
"North Korea is in a difficult situation, in a jam," said Kim Sung-han, a North Korea-US relations expert at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security.
He said the dramatic confessions by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, had undercut Pyongyang's efforts to deny the existence of a clandestine uranium enrichment program that was the catalyst for the nuclear dispute.
"North Korea definitely feels a difference in temperature now," said Kim after South Korea rebuffed the North Korean delegates' efforts to drive a wedge between Seoul and Washington with well-rehearsed calls for "ethnic cooperation."
The North's chief delegate, Kim Ryong-song, sought to blame the US for the relatively slow pace of inter-Korean economic projects and accused Seoul of colluding with Washington.
"To get drawn into the cooperation against the North is to drive the nation to mutual destruction," Kim said on Wednesday.
South Korean Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun, Kim's counterpart, chided him for creating unnecessary trouble.
"If our relations deteriorate, it will only be damaging to the North," Jeong said.
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