Koreas Summit Opens With Discord

By KWANG-TAE KIM

SEOUL, South Korea – South Korea’s president said the first summit in seven years with North Korea began Wednesday on some discordant notes, but in a sign of promise for the talks North Korean leader Kim Jong Il suggested the meeting be extended an extra day.

South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun said Kim took issue with the pace of Seoul’s actions regarding international talks on the North’s nuclear program, that he had problems with the two countries’ joint industrial zone, and that they even quibbled over semantics about efforts to mend decades of enmity.

"We were candid and frank in engaging in the discussion," Roh said at a luncheon with the South Korean delegation in Pyongyang after two hours of talks with Kim, according to pool video relayed to Seoul. "In some issues we did not share the same perceptions."

However, when the two leaders resumed meeting after lunch, Kim proposed that the talks be extended to Friday beyond their scheduled Thursday close, South Korean presidential spokesman Yoon Seong-yong told reporters in Seoul.

Yoon said Seoul officials were considering the offer, and that they interpreted it as Kim’s desire for the talks to proceed in a "more substantial way."

Earlier, Roh said the North "may not be too happy about the pace in which South Korea agreed to implement certain measures" at international arms talks on Pyongyang’s nuclear program. Roh gave no details, but he was likely referring to aid in exchange for disarmament.

Roh also said Kim had issues about the two countries’ joint industrial zone in the North Korean border city of Kaesong – one of the main achievements of the first-ever summit between the Koreas, held in 2000. The South Korean leader has said he would seek this week to expand economic cooperation between the two sides.

However, Roh added: "What we would confirm was that we both had a firm commitment for peace, and a commitment toward change and to set a new direction for the future."

As the summit started, Roh and Kim briefly mentioned recent floods in the North caused by heavy summer rains that left about 600 people dead or missing and tens of thousands homeless. North Korea delayed the summit from its original August date due to the disaster.

Kim appeared animated and smiled repeatedly Wednesday as he greeted Roh – a contrast from his dour demeanor Tuesday, when the two first met briefly at an outdoor welcoming ceremony after the South Korean president arrived in Pyongyang.

The summit comes amid a hiatus in separate international talks on North Korea’s nuclear program, as the six countries involved consider a draft agreement requiring Pyongyang to disable its weapons facilities by the end of the year. It shut down its sole operating reactor in July.

The main U.S. negotiator at those talks, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, told reporters Tuesday in New York that President Bush had agreed to the draft. He declined to give details of its contents.

Hill said the other countries at the arms talks – China, Japan, Russia and the two Koreas – were expected to approve it before it was made public in the next few days.

Once the agreement is signed, Hill said the reactor’s disabling could be started "in a matter of weeks" – rendering it unable to be easily restarted to make more plutonium for bombs. Next year, the U.S. wants the North to abandon its fissile material – paving the way for peace talks to finally formally end the Korean War.

South Korea’s Roh has also said he will campaign for peace at the Pyongyang summit. But it remains unclear what he could accomplish, because any treaty talks would have to include the U.S. and China, which also fought in the conflict. South Korea never signed the 1953 armistice that halted the three-year war.

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Associated Press writers Burt Herman and Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, and Edith M. Lederer in New York contributed to this report.