North Korean leader to visit Seoul for second summit

North Korean leader to visit Seoul for second summit

SEOUL (AFP): South Korean President Kim Dae-Jung and North
Korean supreme leader Kim Jong-Il will meet in Seoul this year, a
top minister said on Tuesday, ending doubts over the planned
summit in the South's capital.

Although Kim Dae-Jung has said he expects his communist
Northern counterpart to visit South Korea sometime in the spring,
the exact venue has never been given.

Speculation had been rampant that the two Kims would hold
their second summit on the South's southern resort island of
Cheju for the safety of the North Korean leader, who has rarely
traveled abroad.

But in a New Year speech, Unification Minister Park Jae-Kyu,
the South's chief North Korea policy maker, said: "We should
perfectly prepare the summit to be held in Seoul this year."

He urged ministry officials to put a high priority on
preparing the follow-up to last June's historic summit between
the two Kims, the first between leaders of the rival states.

Park said it should be the "most important task" of the New
Year to consolidate improvements in relations. "To write a new
history of inter-Korean relations, we must carry out the tasks
that are supposed to be done one by one," Park stressed.

Kim Jong-Il's visit to Seoul is one of South Korea's key
interests for this year amid a logjam of inter-Korean peace
projects.

Bringing a new thaw to the Korean peninsula, the inter-Korean
summit in June led to a series of rapprochement talks and
projects between the rivals who fought the 1950-53 Korean War.

Through the follow-up peace talks, both Koreas organized two
rounds of temporary reunions for family members torn apart for
decades following the war and agreed to re-link a cross-border
railroad and highway.

But inter-Korean peace talks have showed signs of losing steam
over the past weeks with the North accusing the South of issuing
a defense ministry report calling Pyongyang as Seoul's "main
enemy."

The North has repeatedly complained during a recent series of
talks with the South that the report undermined the peace mood.
In return the South accused the North of failing to meet Seoul's
demands to set up a center for more family reunions and mail
exchanges.

The economic cooperation talks last week also faltered over
the energy-starved North's request for 500,000 kilowatts of free
electricity from the South, which reserved its final response.

The scheduled military talks to discuss the reconstruction of
a cross-border railroad and a highway could not take place last
week either.

The cross-border land routes, cut off by the war, would re-
connect Seoul and Pyongyang and reach the city of Shinuiju on the
North's border with China.

Soldiers on both sides will have to clear a corridor through
the four kilometer wide border, which is littered with landmines,
concrete bunkers and guard posts.

South Korean troops began removing landmines from the southern
border following the ground-breaking ceremony in last September.