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S. Korea agrees to military talks with North
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S. Korea agrees to military talks with North
AFP - 24 minutes ago
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S. Korea agrees to military talks with North
SEOUL (AFP) - – South Korea on Thursday accepted North Korea's offer of high-level military talks to ease months of tension, but said Pyongyang must admit responsibility for two deadly border attacks.
The offer came in a message from defence minister Kim Yong-Chun to his counterpart in the South, Kim Kwan-Jin.
Seoul's unification ministry said the North suggested that the two sides exchange views on both incidents and on "military tension reduction" on the peninsula.
Cross-border relations worsened sharply last May when South Korea accused the North of torpedoing one of its warships, the Cheonan, with the loss of 46 lives, a charge Pyongyang denies.
Tensions rose even higher after the North bombarded a South Korean border island in November, killing four people including civilians and briefly sparking fears of all-out war.
The North said the shelling was in response to the South's artillery drill on the island near the disputed border, which dropped shells into what Pyongyang claims as its waters.
In an abrupt change of tack this year, the North has repeatedly called for talks, but Thursday's offer was the first proposal for a high-level meeting. The unification ministry, which handles cross-border affairs, made clear Seoul was sticking to its terms for dialogue -- that the North accept responsibility for the two attacks and show sincerity about nuclear disarmament.
"We will come to the high-level military talks, whose agenda should include the North's making a firm commitment to taking responsible measures concerning the sinking of the Cheonan and the shelling on Yeonpyeong island," spokeswoman Lee Jong-Joo told AFP.
She said the South agreed to the North's proposal for working-level preparatory talks.
"As the North did not mention our demand as to denuclearisation, we will also separately propose high-level government talks to verify their seriousness about denuclearisation."
Washington welcomed the move towards talks, which came a day after US President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao agreed in a summit statement that "sincere and constructive dialogue" between the two Koreas was essential.
"That is an important step forward, I think some of that comes as a result of yesterday's meeting here... clearly a positive step," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said on Thursday.
The North has previously baulked at talking about its nuclear programme with the South, saying it was designed to deter US attacks and should be discussed with Washington.
Its disclosure last November of an apparently functioning uranium enrichment plant -- a potential second way to make atomic bombs -- heightened security fears.
Obama and Hu expressed concern at the "claimed" uranium enrichment programme. They called for the "necessary steps" to restart stalled six-nation nuclear disarmament talks grouping the two Koreas, Japan, Russia, the United States and China.
Seoul has dismissed previous dialogue offers as insincere and designed to depict the North as a peacemaker.
It was unclear whether the North was calling for a meeting of the two defence ministers, which would be only the third in a decade, or for talks between generals.
China is the North's sole major ally and economic prop. US officials have urged it to do more to restrain Pyongyang, although they credit it with pulling the North back from threats of another strike last month.
A senior Seoul government official told reporters earlier in the day that the South wanted to break the pattern of the past.
He described this as the North provoking tensions before offering dialogue and the South responding with food aid.
The official said he was "very confident that North Korea has started to recognise and realise that this (Seoul) government is really different from what they have faced for the last several decades."
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