Seoul reports breakthrough in preparing for Korean summit

Seoul reports breakthrough in preparing for Korean summit

SEOUL (Agencies): South Korea and North Korea made a
breakthrough in weeks of negotiations to prepare for a summit of
their leaders by resolving differences over its agenda, South
Korea said on Thursday.

That left only one issue unresolved - the size of the South
Korean press corps -- for the June 12-14 summit in the North
Korean capital of Pyongyang, Seoul's Unification Ministry said in
a news release.

North Korea sent a new draft accord by telephone on Thursday
that is similar to that of South Korea except for the size of the
press corps, it said.

After four rounds of talks at the border village of Panmunjom,
the Koreas decided to try to resolve pending issues through
documents instead of meetings.

Stalinist North Korea's phobia of negative media coverage made
it hard to prepare for the first inter-Korean summit in Pyongyang
in June, a former Seoul official said.

"North Korea is concerned about the (media) exposure of the
regime's weak points," former vice unification minister Song
Young-dae said in a discussion on the summit, hosted by Chosun
Ilbo newspaper.

The rival Koreas were wrestling over the size of the press
corps to accompany South Korean President Kim Dae-jung to
Pyongyang for the historic summit with North Korean leader Kim
Jong-il.

"It may be a (North Korean) ploy aimed at taming South Korean
media and blocking them from making reports negative to
Pyongyang," Song said.

While Seoul proposes 80 South Korean journalists be allowed to
enter the North for summit coverage, Pyongyang demands just 30 to
40.

The planned summit would be the first between leaders of the
Koreas, which were divided into the communist North and the pro-
Western South at the end of World War II. Their three-year war in
the early 1950s ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.

South Korea proposed a four-point agenda calling for economic
cooperation, the reunion of separated family members, peace
measures and a permanent channel of government dialog.

North Korea reportedly suggested a broadly worded agenda
stressing peace and national unification.

South Korean officials said privately that they would accept
the North Korean suggestion but that they differed over its
language. Details were not released.

Also on Thursday, North Korea accepted a South Korean proposal
to provide it with 200,000 tons of free fertilizer, the ministry
said. South Korea had offered to ship the fertilizer by June in
what was seen as a goodwill gesture to facilitate preparations
for the summit.

North Korea said it wanted to receive the fertilizer through
five ports. Red Cross officials of the two sides were expected to
meet on the border soon to arrange shipments.