Six-party talks on the crisis over North Korea's nuclear ambitions will take place in Beijing from Wednesday to Saturday next week, the official Xinhua news agency said yesterday, citing unidentified sources.
The discussions would be preceded by two days of working-level talks, Xinhua said in a dispatch from Seoul. It gave no further details.
The two Koreas, the US, Japan, Russia and China have met in Beijing twice without making progress on an agreement on dismantling the North's covert nuclear weapons program.
At the last round in Beijing in February, the parties agreed to meet again before the end of this month. South Korea's Foreign Ministry was set to officially announce the dates at a news conference at 7am today.
Earlier yesterday, a spokesman with the US embassy in Beijing said plans to hold talks during the week of June 21 were "agreeable" to Washington, who has demanded a "complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling" of North Korea's nuclear weapons facilities.
South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun yesterday said his country would provide huge infusions of economic assistance to North Korea if the dispute was resolved peacefully.
"Inter-Korean cooperation will be accelerated if the North Korean nuclear issue is resolved, and we are preparing comprehensive and concrete plans for that," Roh said in a speech marking the anniversary of the 2000 summit that launched a process of reconciliation.
South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted Roh as saying South Korea would cooperate closely with the North to help it "build infrastructure and enhance industrial production capacity, which will develop North Korea's economy in an epochal manner.
"We will also cooperate with neighboring countries to help the international community enhance economic cooperation with North Korea,'' he said.
However, the reconciliation process remains vulnerable to tension over the nuclear standoff, which some politicians and other experts in Washington view as a challenge to global security on par -- or even greater than -- the conflict in Iraq.
Meanwhile, North and South Korea marked the fourth anniversary of an inter-Korean summit on Monday by halting propaganda broadcasts over loudspeakers along their border.
Military generals on both sides agreed to the halt during talks earlier this month. They also said they would dismantle large propaganda billboards by mid-August.
The crisis over Pyongyang's nuclear arms program erupted in October 2002, when US officials said North Korea had disclosed it was working on a secret program to enrich uranium for weapons, in violation of an international agreement.
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