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Koreas for more talks

By P. S. Suryanarayana

SINGAPORE Oct. 23. The extended inter-Korean talks, the latest in a series of ministerial-level parleys, ended in Pyongyang in the early hours of today on a note of compromise that does not reflect the sense of urgency which the U.S. would like the international community to evince in order to stop North Korea in its nuclear weaponisation tracks.

The two Korean delegations agreed that the North's covert operation to make nuclear weapons, an issue that the U.S. says Pyongyang has admitted to, should be addressed through `dialogue' so that a `peaceful' resolution of the issues at stake could be accomplished.

At the other end of the complex spectrum of a Korean puzzle, the United States maintained that it was still engaged in `consultations' with allies such as Japan and South Korea and with `friends' in this context such as China. No final decision of any kind was, therefore, hinted at by either the White House or the State Department at this delicate stage.

The two Koreas have been, in a sense, felt encouraged by Washington's current inclination to adopt a differential approach towards North Korea despite the American insistence on what it sees as a no-nonsense strategy to disarm Iraq of its suspected capabilities to make and deploy weapons of mass destruction. This explains the latest inter-Korean accord to let dialogue take its course among the parties concerned.

The South Korean President, Kim Dae-jung, is expected to discuss North Korea when he meets the U.S. President, George W. Bush, and the Japanese Prime Minister, Junichiro Koizumi, in a trilateral summit on the sidelines of an Asia Pacific meeting in Mexico within the next few days. It was in this context that Mr. Kim and presidential aspirants in South Korea today agreed that there was no question of allowing Pyongyang to take wings as a nuclear-armed country.

Top security officials from South Korea as also Japan and the U.S. are scheduled to meet in Tokyo over the next week-end to size up the North Korean issue. However, South Korea's upbeat mood over the inter-Korean accord came as surprise to some sections of the Asia Pacific diplomatic and political circles.

According to an authentic version, South Korea's chief negotiator at the inter-Korean talks - the Unification Minister, Jeong Se-hyun — noted, upon his return to Seoul from Pyongyang, that it became clear that North Koreans wished to allay the fears of the international community over their nuclear weaponisation drive. It was in the context of such an inter-Korean empathy of not wishing to paint each other in the worst possible colours that Pyongyang had, during the course of the talks, threatened to take "a tougher counter-action'' if the U.S. were to adopt "a strong-arm policy'' towards the North.

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