Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Choi Sung-hong said at a press conference that President Kim Dae-jung and his US counterpart George W. Bush agreed to reach a prompt conclusion to North Korea's WMD (weapons of mass destruction) development at their summit meeting, and while there is no deadline, the two leaders realized that resuming the suspended dialogue is the first step for resolving this.

A government official said that Washington made clear at the summit meeting that it has no intention to play an initiative role for the dialogue, nor to offer incentives to Pyongyang to bring them to the talk table, adding that Korea should persuade the North to come out of seclusion.

The official continued that while President Bush remained subtle, he implied divided roles for Korea and the US, Seoul leading the negotiation with the North and Washington taking a supporting role.

The two countries had a working-level meeting in the MOFAT conference room at the Central Government Complex in Seoul, and discussed follow-up measures for the Korea-US summit meeting. Senior representative Kim Seong-hwan, the MOFAT North American bureau chief, opened the meeting with a speech stressing that the summit meeting created an affirmative mood for dialogue, and suggested coming up with measures to induce Pyongyang to negotiate. Kim added that James Pritchard, the US special envoy for Korean peace talks, had offered complete cooperation.

(Kim In-ku, ginko@chosun )