North Korea rejected a proposal by South Korea at a secret meeting last month to hold a series of three summits in a bid to defuse tension on the divided peninsula, the North’s KCNA state news agency reported yesterday.
South Korea had proposed last month to hold three summits over the next 12 months, KCNA reported, citing a spokesman for the National Defense Commission.
“We have made it clear there would never be a summit meeting as long as the South maintains a hostile policy and insists [North Korea] should abandon its nuclear program and apologize over the two incidents,” KCNA said.
As a precondition for bilateral talks, Seoul demands the North apologize for two deadly attacks on the peninsula last year that killed 50 South Koreans.
The North denies -responsibility for the first attack, the sinking of the Cheonan warship, and says it was provoked into shelling the South Korean island after the South had test-fired shells in disputed waters.
KCNA reported that the South had proposed the first summit be held at the border village of Panmunjom this month, a second in August in Pyongyang and a third on the sidelines of an international nuclear summit in South Korea next year.
At the beginning of this year, the two Koreas said they wanted to ease tension and agreed to negotiations, but subsequent military talks broke down quickly without even agreement on an agenda.
Since then, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak has extended the offer of a summit on a number of occasions, setting as a precondition the North’s apology for the two attacks.
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