S.Korea seeks military assurances on ties with North

SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea is hoping military talks
later this week with the North will lay the foundation for more
confidence-building measures between the two armies on the Cold
War’s last frontier, officials said on Tuesday.

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

The South’s Defense Ministry said on Monday colonels from
the two Koreas will meet on Friday for one day at the Panmunjom
truce village in the Demilitarized Zone, which divides the
peninsula.

“Our position is we should hold a meeting of generals at
the earliest time possible following the working-level
(colonels’) meeting,” a Defense Ministry official said by
telephone, without offering details as to when a generals’
meeting might take place.

Military generals from the two Koreas agreed at rare talks
in 2004 on measures to prevent deadly naval clashes and to take
down propaganda signs along the heavily fortified border.

Talks at the same level did not take place last year but
the two militaries held working-level military talks in July
2005.

“On the agenda for the generals’ meeting will be specific
measures to prevent accidental clashes in the West Sea (Yellow
Sea) and setting up confidence-building measures,” the official
said.

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

The military talks come as six-country discussions on
ending North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs have hit a snag
over a U.S. crackdown on firms Washington suspects of helping
the North with illegal activities.

South Korea has sought to cement growing commercial and
political ties with the North by stepping up military
safeguards.

“We need more definite military assurances to back up
inter-Korean business, especially with the Kaesong project
making progress,” another government official said.

South Korea last year opened a liaison office jointly with
the North in the North Korean border city of Kaesong, where
some South Korean firms set up shop and use the North’s cheap
labor.

North Korea, China and the United States signed an
armistice in 1953 to end the three-year Korean War but never
replaced it with a permanent peace treaty.