Top envoys from North Korea declined to meet South Korea's pleas to set a date for returning to international nuclear disarmament talks but returned home yesterday with a pledge of food aid and accords to foster family reunions and other cooperation across their tense border.
During Cabinet-level reconciliation talks that ended on Thursday, the two Koreas agreed to a series of reconciliation meetings in coming months. But the nuclear impasse continued, with the North lashing out anew at US President George W. Bush for meeting a prominent North Korean defector, saying it was counterproductive in efforts to resume nuclear talks.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il raised hopes last week when he told a visiting South Korean minister of a possible return to the table as early as next month, if the North gets appropriate respect from the US.
The South tried to get the North to commit to that timeframe, but got no "definite answer" this week, said Kim Chun-shick, a spokesman for the South's delegation. However, both sides agreed to resolve the nuclear dispute peacefully.
"The South and the North have agreed to take real measures for peaceful resolution of the nuclear issue through dialogue, as the atmosphere is created, with the ultimate goal of denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," the South's Unification Minister Chung Dong-young said.
Washington has dismissed Kim Jong-il's recent comments, saying Pyongyang needs to set a firm date to return to the negotiations and talk substantively about giving up its nuclear program.
The talks' failure to make concrete progress on the nuclear issue drew criticism yesterday from South Korea's conservative media, which called on the government to consider its continued aid to the North in light of Pyongyang's refusal to abandon its nuclear weapons.
"North Korea, in reality, has not taken one step forward from the stance that the North Korean leader Kim Jong-il elucidated recently in Pyongyang," the main Chosun Ilbo daily wrote in an editorial.
Three rounds of talks have failed to yield notable progress, but Washington has insisted the nuclear dispute be resolved in that forum and spurned the North's requests for direct talks.
North Korea boasted in February that it had atomic weapons, and has moved in recent months to potentially harvest more radioactive material to add to a supply believed enough for a half-dozen bombs.
The North's propaganda machine launched another tirade on Thursday at the US, criticizing Bush for hosting Kang Chol Hwan, a North Korean defector now working as a journalist in South Korea who has written a memoir detailing a decade of abuses he suffered at a North Korean prison camp. The North's Korean Central News Agency said the meeting was "an act of throwing a wet blanket on the efforts to resume" the nuclear talks.
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