All systems are `go' for inter-Korean summit

All systems are `go' for inter-Korean summit

By Kate Webb

SEOUL (AFP): All systems appear set to go for this month's first inter-Korean summit in Pyongyang despite a warning from the Stalinist North that it could founder if the nuclear issue is raised.

A weekend meeting on protocol issues decided the South's dissident-turned-President Kim Young-sam, 66, whose mother was killed by a North Korean infiltrator in 1960, will cross the heavily-fortified Demilitarized Zone July 25.

He will travel by road to the summit in Pyongyang with his aging North Korean counterpart Kim Il-sung, 82, in a car provided by the North, accompanied by 100 officials and an 80-member- strong press corps.

Saturday's protocol meeting at the truce village of Panmunjom also bulldozed through previously insurmountable barriers -- including non-recognition by the North of the South as a separate state and the fact that they are still technically at war. The issues were simply sidestepped.

The 14-point protocol signed at the end of Saturday's meeting rejected the use of national symbols -- flags or anthems during the summit and avoided the use of the word "president."

A 25-member Southern advance party will head for Pyongyang three days before the summit, during which the North will provide a written guarantee of the personal safety of the Southern delegates.

But while the procedural obstacles were speedily brushed away, the nuclear issue still hung heavy over the summit and the hopes it holds out for breaking through the world's last Cold War barrier.

While the North-South protocol officers were all smiles Saturday, North Korea's mouthpiece the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) was churning out warnings to the South not to raise the question of access to the North's nuclear program.

"This (bringing up the nuclear question) is an act of beclouding the atmosphere," KCNA said, cautioning that mention of Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions at the summit would be "provocative."

Previous deal

The allusion was apparently to a clause in a four-point accord signed by two sides last week in which they pledged to try to maintain an atmosphere that would not disrupt the summit, which follows a North Korea-U.S. meeting on the issue in Geneva July 8.

But Seoul has remained adamant that the nuclear issue would be at the forefront of the summit agenda.

Both meetings, and a temporary freeze of North Korea's nuclear program, were brokered by former U.S. president Jimmy Carter last month.

"The consistent position of our government," said trade minister Kim Chul-su Friday. "Is that nothing can happen (in the field of increased inter-Korean trade) before the nuclear issue has been satisfactorily resolved?"

Trade and investment, along with pledges that the capitalist South has no intention of trying to "absorb" the ailing economy in the North, form the basis of the package Kim Young-sam's aides have said he will take to Pyongyang.

But, they say, it will be contingent on Kim Il-sung pledging an end to the 18-month standoff with the United Nations over the North's suspect nuclear program, which many North Korean analysts here have seen as a lethal bargaining chip to gain diplomatic recognition.

The trade minister was speaking of direct cross border trade, joint ventures and investment by the capitalist South in the Stalinist North which has seen its GNP plummet since the collapse of the former Soviet Union.

Southern businessmen have been chaffing at the linkage, contending that if they are not allowed to move fast the plums from the North's new economic zones open to foreigners will be picked by China and Japan.