North and South Korean generals hold talks

SEOUL (Reuters) – North and South Korean generals began
rare talks on Thursday on reducing military tensions and
building confidence to help improve cross-border ties, a South
Korean official said.

Lower-level, but senior, military officers from the two
sides met last month at a border truce village and agreed on
resuming the generals’ talks, which had been suspended since
June, 2004.

Efforts to reduce military tensions between the North and
South, which remain technically at war, have lagged behind
improving political and economic ties in recent years.

Generals from the two sides met at the Panmunjom truce
village, a South Korean Defense Ministry official said by
telephone. Panmunjom is at the heart of the heavily fortified
Demilitarized Zone frontier and has conference buildings that
straddle the border.

There were two rare rounds of general-level talks in 2004
that resulted in an agreement on measures to prevent deadly
naval clashes, but generals had not met formally since then.

Naval clashes in fishing grounds in the Yellow Sea in past
years have killed or wounded scores of sailors on both sides.

Improvements on such measures and on developing joint
fishing zones were on the agenda for the generals.

South Korean officials have said more confidence-building
measures are needed to ensure military tension does not get in
the way of growing commercial ties across the border.

One example of this is what South Korean analysts say is
lagging support from the North’s military for linking railways
through the border and making road travel less cumbersome.