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Korean leaders open summit amid nuclear hopes

by Staff Writers
Seoul (AFP) Oct 3, 2007
The leaders of South and North Korea opened summit talks Wednesday aimed at ending half a century of hostility amid signs of progress in international efforts to shut down the North's nuclear programme.

With a slight smile on his face, reclusive North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il shook hands with President Roh Moo-Hyun before the meeting at the guest house in Pyongyang where Roh is staying.

Kim, who came out in person Tuesday to welcome Roh, thanked the president for crossing the world's last Cold War frontier by land, saying the symbolism was "very meaningful."

Roh, an advocate of greater engagement with the North, replied: "The people's warm welcome was very impressive and I thank you very much for appearing at the ceremony."

The two leaders closed a morning session and were due later Wednesday to resume the talks, only the second in the history of the communist North and the capitalist South.

Seoul says peace and prosperity will be the overriding themes of this week's three-day meeting between two nations, which are still technically at war following their 1950-53 conflict.

Progress in six-nation nuclear talks could warm the mood.

The United States said Tuesday it approved an agreement reached Sunday in Beijing, under which North Korea gave a detailed plan to declare and disable its programmes in return for energy aid and diplomatic breakthroughs.

The summit talks began just six days before the first anniversary of the North's atomic bomb test which stunned the world.

But Roh, despite criticism from conservative critics at home, has said the nuclear issue will not top the agenda as it is being tackled elsewhere and might sour the atmosphere.

The usually taciturn Kim managed some small talk Wednesday morning as they met. "Did you sleep well?" he asked the president.

"I had a good night's sleep. The accommodation is very satisfactory," Roh replied.

Kim, who appeared stiff at Tuesday's welcoming ceremony, also flatly denied rumours he was in ill health, telling Roh that he was "not a patient."

Roh offered the film buff gifts including some 150 DVDs such as "Joint Security Area," a South Korean blockbuster thriller about a near-war between the countries.

The two leaders could adopt a joint statement or "peace declaration" late at night, officials said.

Roh, who has doggedly pursued a "sunshine" engagement policy with the North despite its missile and nuclear tests, told a welcome dinner Tuesday that a new era of reconciliation and cooperation was dawning on the divided peninsula.

But any peace declaration would be mainly symbolic. A treaty formally concluding the war, which ended only in an armistice, also needs the signatures of co-belligerents the United States and China.

Joint economic projects to revive the North's crumbling command economy will be high on the agenda. The South's per capita income is almost 17 times higher than the North, where millions rely on international food aid.

Officials say the two sides could agree on participation by the South in massive infrastructure and industrial development projects in the North.

The South Korean leader, possibly accompanied by Kim, is scheduled to pay a controversial evening visit to the Arirang mass gymnastics performance.

Critics say Roh should skip the performance, which involves up to 100,000 students and others staging elaborate flash card tableaux in praise of the hardline communist state and its founder Kim Il-Sung -- who invaded the South in 1950.

Seoul says the content has been toned down for Roh's benefit.

Roh will then host a dinner for senior officials from both sides, for which the South Koreans have brought their own food.

Newspapers agreed Kim's greeting was notably more restrained than that he gave Roh's predecessor Kim Dae-Jung in 2000, but could not agree why.

Some speculated that Kim, as Roh's elder by four years, was expected to be more formal than with Kim Dae-Jung, who was his senior. Others said the North Korean leader may be seeking a psychological advantage.

earlier related report
US to be 'heavily involved' in NKorea's nuclear disablement
The United States will be "heavily involved" on the ground in North Korea's nuclear disablement process under a six-nation disarmament deal, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said Tuesday.

"There are some undertakings in this agreement which would involve, for example, the issue of various parties, namely the US, participating very heavily in the issue of actual disablement," Hill told reporters in New York when asked about an agreement reached in principle among the six parties in Beijing last week.

"So we will anticipate having people on the ground to participate in the disablement, for example," Hill said. "This is something that people had to look at carefully."

Hill was replying to a question on why the joint statement reached among the United States, China, the two Koreas, Japan and Russia had been kept under close wraps for the envoys involved in the talks to return to their capitals to get government approvals.

Washington on Tuesday conveyed its approval to the agreement to China, which chairs the six-party talks.

The agreement required North Korea, which tested a nuclear bomb in October last year, to declare and disable its nuclear arsenal in return for energy aid and other benefits under the second phase of a February 13 disarmament deal among the six parties.

Hill said Beijing would make public the agreement once the other five governments also gave their nod to the deal.

The disablement process would get underway "in a matter of weeks" after the approval, he said.

Hill said the third and final phase would require North Korea to surrender all its fissile material and nuclear weapons, pointing out that "this is what we are worried about."

In July, North Korea shut down its only operating reactor at Yongbyon in return for fuel aid under the first phase of the deal.

The International Atomic Energy Agency in August confirmed the shutdown, along with the closure of a nuclear fuel fabrication plant, a reprocessing plant and a separate 50-megawatt reactor, only partly built, at Yongbyon.

Experts from the United States and two other nuclear weapons states Russia and China were in North Korea last month discussing the measures needed to disable the communist state's atomic weapons program. They made an extensive visit to the Yongbyon site.

The United States has no diplomatic relations with North Korea but Washington has agreed to restore ties with the nuclear rival once the disarmament deal is fully implemented.

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Nuclear envoys reach 'comprehensive' NKorea deal: US
Beijing (AFP) Sept 30, 2007
Envoys from six nations struck an agreement Sunday on the next phase of ending North Korea's nuclear weapons programme, which the United States hailed as comprehensive and detailed.







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