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

Posted on: Monday, 15 August 2005, 21:35 CDT

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.

Source: REUTERS

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