S. Korea seeks talks with North on ship<\/p>\n
SEOUL (Reuter): South Korea sought yesterday to open talks
\nwith communist North Korea to negotiate the return of its rice
\nship and 21 crew held by the North on spy charges.<\/p>\n
Kim Hyung-ki, assistant unification minister for information
\nand analysis, arrived in Beijing to try to contact a North Korean
\nrepresentative, but ministry officials said the chances of an
\nimminent meeting were slim.<\/p>\n
\"We sent a cable yesterday proposing a contact to discuss the
\nrepatriation of the rice ship, but the North has yet to give any
\nresponse,\" a ministry spokesman said.<\/p>\n
\"It is unlikely the talks will open soon,\" he added.<\/p>\n
Under an accord signed in Beijing last June, South Korea is
\nsupplying 150,000 tons of free rice to the North to ease what
\nSeoul says is a chronic food shortage and to improve ties. Half
\nhas been shipped to the North already.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, North Korea abruptly told the South it would
\nshelve a third round of talks on the rice aid due to have opened
\nin Beijing yesterday.<\/p>\n
North Korea accused a crewman on the 9,400-ton Samsun Venus of
\nillegally photographing port facilities when the ship docked at
\nChongjin a week ago and said he admitted spying.<\/p>\n
The North demanded the South to apologize, continue supplying
\nrice to the North and guarantee no future espionage by ships
\ncarrying rice.<\/p>\n
In a cable sent to the North on Wednesday, Vice Minister of
\nFinance and Economy Lee Suk-chae expressed regret that the
\nincident led to cancellation of rice talks, the only existing
\nofficial channel of dialogue between the two Koreas.<\/p>\n
\"It is regrettable that the picture-taking incident in
\nChongjin port is creating a setback in implementing rice delivery
\nand other agreements and in opening the third round of Beijing
\ntalks.\" said Lee, Seoul's chief negotiator in rice talks with the
\nNorth.<\/p>\n
\"It would be regrettable if one of our crew members had made a
\npersonal mistake and taken pictures. But our two sides would be
\nable to solve this problem satisfactorily out of mutual respect,\"
\nLee said.<\/p>\n
The Samsun Venus, which unloaded 5,000 tons of rice at
\nChongjin, was to have left the North on Sunday.<\/p>\n
South Korean Foreign Ministry officials said yesterday that
\ndespite the row over the rice ship, a team from Korean Peninsula
\nEnergy Development Organization (KEDO) would visit North Korea
\nnext week as scheduled.<\/p>\n
The KEDO consortium was created in March to implement a U.S.-
\nNorth Korea accord to replace the North's plutonium-producing
\nreactors at Yongbyon with light-water reactors that cannot easily
\nbe used to convert fuel to weapons-grade material.<\/p>\n
\"The team of some 15 people from the United States, Japan and
\n(South) Korea will visit the North from August 15 to 22 to
\nconduct a site survey for light-water reactors,\" a ministry
\nofficial said.<\/p>\n
North Korea watchers in Seoul said Pyongyang was spurning a
\nbid by South Korea to achieve a breakthrough in relations by
\nproviding emergency rice aid to the communist state.<\/p>\n
South Korea had hoped the rice talks in Beijing would lead to
\nsteps ending the long-standing hostilities on the divided Korean
\nPeninsula, regarded as the Cold War's last frontier.<\/p>",
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