Two Koreas agree to talk but disagree on issues

SEOUL - Senior officials from North and South Korea begin four days of talks today reviving bilateral dialogue after a year of deadlock, but still differing sharply over what they want from the meeting.

South Koreas will push North Korea for a firm commitment to return to stalled six-country talks on North Korea's nuclear plans, but the impoverished North's top priority will probably be winning more farm aid to feed its people, a South Korean official said.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il told South Korea's unification minister last week his country would return to the nuclear talks in July if the United States showed it respect, raising hope those negotiations could resume soon after a year of delay. The US said the North was just making more excuses.

"A key issue for us will be the North Korean nuclear issue," the South Korean government official said ahead of the talks in Seoul.

South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun and US President George W Bush agreed at talks in Washington on June 10 to keep pushing the North to return to the table. Some US officials fear the North may be planning a nuclear test.

Going by past practice, the North will seek to avoid talking to the South about the nuclear crisis, beyond generalities.

"We are expecting the North to raise the question of food and fertiliser aid," said the official, who asked not to be named.

This week's ministerial talks resume high-level dialogue after the North broke off all contact last July in anger over the South's airlift of 468 North Korean refugees from Vietnam.

The North abruptly returned to dialogue last month, hosting vice ministerial talks and winning 200,000 tonnes of fertiliser aid from the South. It offered no commitment on resolving the two-year nuclear standoff. On Saturday, it asked for more aid.

A breakthrough on the nuclear crisis appears unlikely at this week's talks since the North does not regard it as a bilateral matter, a North Korea expert in Seoul said.

"There may be mention of the nuclear issue, but there is not going to be a major development," Huh Moon-young of the Korea Institute of National Unification think-tank said.

"South Korea cannot resolve the issue no matter how much it wants to."

The North hosted 340 South Korean delegates, including Unification Minister Chung Dong-young, at a festival last week marking the fifth anniversary of a historic inter-Korean summit.

Agreeing to meet at the ministerial talks hosted by Chung may indicate the North will return to the six-country talks in the next few months, Huh said. The six-party talks involve the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the US.

There have been 14 rounds of inter-Korean ministerial-level talks since 2000, when the leaders of the two Koreas held a landmark summit in Pyongyang and pledged reconciliation.

The talks have been the forum to discuss economic aid, political reconciliation and easing military tension. Critics say the North has conceded little while amassing aid.

The North Korean delegation to this week's talks will be headed by Kwon Ho-ung, a chief cabinet councillor and a relative newcomer to the bilateral talks.

- REUTERS