N.Koreans to have unprecedented talks with South’s MPs

By Jack Kim

SEOUL (Reuters) – Senior North Korean communist party
officials were expected to have an unprecedented meeting in
South Korea’s parliament with lawmakers on Tuesday, officials
said.

Kim Ki-nam, who is also a vice chairman of the North’s body
overseeing ties with the South, was scheduled to meet with the
speaker of South Korea’s parliament and legislative leaders,
officials from South Korea’s Unification Ministry said.

Members of the delegation may also meet former South Korean
President Kim Dae-jung, who met North Korean leader Kim Jong-il
in Pyongyang in 2000 in the first and only summit of leaders on
the divided peninsula. The former South Korean president has
been in hospital with pneumonia.

“The visit will be limited to a small group,” a South
Korean official said explaining the visit.

A 182-member North Korean delegation is in the South for
joint celebrations marking the 60th anniversary of the end of
Japanese colonial rule over the Korean peninsula.

Members of the delegation, which arrived on Sunday, are
scheduled to meet South Korea’s President Roh Moo-yun before
returning to Pyongyang on Wednesday.

The meetings come during a recess in multilateral talks
aimed at having North Korea end its nuclear weapons programs in
exchange for security guarantees and economic aid.

South Korean officials have said they hope the parties in
the nuclear talks — the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and
the United States — will be able to narrow differences before
the discussions are scheduled to resume in Beijing in the week
of August 29.

South Korean lawmakers have met with their counterparts
from North Korea in the North, but a delegation from Pyongyang
has never met in South Korea’s parliament with lawmakers there,
the officials said.

The two Koreas are technically at war under a truce that
ended the 1950-53 Korean War, but have forged rapidly improving
ties since the meeting of their leaders five years ago.