hankyoreh

Defense chiefs of the two Koreas failed Thursday to agree on a joint fishing area around the disputed western sea border, as the North insisted on drawing the zone further south of the de-facto maritime border, according to South Korean delegates here.

The two sides, however, agreed to a seven-point agreement calling for security guarantees for inter-Korean economic projects and the next round of defense ministerial talks to be held next year, they said. The two Koreas also agreed to set up a joint military committee to explore ways of reducing tensions. The committee will be headed by the vice defense ministers of the two countries.

No other details of the agreement to be released at the end of the three-day talks were available yet.

"South and North Korea will release a joint statement soon," a South Korean delegate said.

Fixing the joint fishing zone was South Korea's primary goal of the first inter-korean defense ministerial talks in seven years.

The fishing zone, designed to prevent accidental naval clashes in the crab-rich West Sea, was agreed upon at the October summit between the South and North Korean leaders.

The wrangling over the Northern Limit Line (NLL) acted as a deal-breaker again, as it had for the previous meeting between the defense chiefs of the two countries in 2000.

North Korea does not recognize the NLL by the United Nations troops commander at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.

North Korea refused to offer an area north of the NLL for the fishing area. Pyongyang has wanted to create it south of the NLL, while South Korea has called for both sides to give the same amount of area for the zone. The NLL dispute led to bloody naval skirmishes between the two Koreas in 1999 and 2002.


PYONGYANG, Nov. 29 (Yonhap)