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North and South Korean generals to meet: Seoul

Posted on: Friday, 3 February 2006, 01:35 CST

By Jack Kim

SEOUL (Reuters) - North and South Korean generals will resume talks later this month or early in March on reducing military tensions and building confidence to help improve cross-border ties, a South Korean official said on Friday.

Lower-level, but senior, military officers from the two sides met on Friday at a border truce village and agreed on resuming the generals' talks, which have been suspended since June 2004, Vice Unification Minister Rhee Bong-jo told a news conference.

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.

"We look forward to a military guarantee agreement that will reduce military tension and build confidence and also promote further economic cooperation between the South and North," Rhee said.

South Korea's delegation to Friday's talks met with the North Koreans at the Panmunjom truce village. 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 have not met formally since then.

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

RAIL AND TRADE

Improvements on such measures and on developing joint fishing zones will be on the agenda when the generals meet for two days, Rhee said.

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.

To help the effort to join transport lines, the president of South Korea's Railroad Corp., Lee Chul, will visit the North at the weekend and hold discussions with Pyongyang's rail officials, the state-run corporation said.

Lee will fly to Beijing on Friday and enter Pyongyang on Saturday, the corporation said in a statement.

Rhee said Lee had discussed using the railway to send South Korean fans to the World Cup soccer games in Germany in June, but added the idea needed considerable work to be realized.

Former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung is seeking to visit the North by train some time in April, an aide has said.

Kim won a Nobel Peace prize for orchestrating an unprecedented, and so far unrepeated, meeting of the leaders of the two Koreas when he met North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in 2000.

North Korea's military plays a powerful role in how the communist country is run, and much of its creaking economic activity is geared to supporting the more than one-million-strong armed forces.

South Korea has been pressing the North to finish the rail work on its side of the border and to allow test trains to run.

Last year, North Korea agreed in principle to resume the generals' meeting but it did not materialize.

(Additional reporting by Lee Jin-joo)

Source: REUTERS

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