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