N. Korea calls for general-level military talks

Posted on : 2007-05-02 20:49 KST Modified on : 2019-10-19 20:29 KST

North Korea Wednesday proposed holding high-level military talks with South Korea next week to prepare for the agreed-upon test runs of reconnected cross-border railways, the South Korean Defense Ministry said.

"North Korea has proposed general-level talks from May 8-10 at Tongilgak, a pavilion on the northern side of Panmunjom, in a telephone message signed by Army Lt. Gen. Kim Yong-chol," a ministry spokesman said.

Pyongyang's offer is an answer to Seoul's earlier proposal for working-level military talks this week for test runs of the inter-Korean railways.

"We will review what the North's intention is and consult with related ministries before making a decision by Thursday," the spokesman said.

The meeting would be the first inter-Korean discussion to involve the generals in a year.

The previous session, the fourth since the historic summit between the two Koreas in 2000, was held at the House of Peace, a South Korean administrative building inside the demilitarized zone The session failed to produce results, although it was supposed to find ways to avoid armed clashes in the West Sea, establish a joint fishing zone there and seek a security guarantee for the operation of the inter-Korean railways.

Defense ministry officials said the North is likely to raise the sensitive issue of clarifying the maritime border in the West Sea to replace the Northern Limit Line which the North would not recognize over the past decades. The NLL was set up by the United Nations Command at the end of the three-year Korean War in 1953.

"The North's offer of the higher-level talks can be either positive or negative," Army Col. Moon Sung-mook, head of the ministry's North Korea policy team told Yonhap News Agency. "But we don't need to see it(the fact that the North has replied to our offer) negatively."

Seoul, May 2 (Yonhap News)

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