Top brass from the two Koreas on Thursday ended another round of talks without any agreement on the key issues they had come to discuss -- test runs for cross-border railways and prevention of clashes around the ill-defined West Sea border. The two sides also failed to set a date for a fifth round of general-level talks or for working-level military talks, let alone produce a joint press statement.
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On the last day of talks between top brass from the two Koreas, Col. Kil Kang-seop ushers North Korean delegates into the conference venue on Thursday.
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The failure to win a guarantee of safe passage for the newly reconnected railways and roads from the North Korean military casts test runs of trains planned for May 25 into doubt. ¡°We notified the North that we would propose a meeting to discuss the trial run right before carrying it out,¡± said Col. Moon Sung-mook, the deputy chief of the South Korean delegation and head of the Defense Ministry's North Korea policy team. ¡°It¡¯s not likely that the trial run will be delayed since the North does to a certain degree see the need to do it ,¡± he claimed. The issue has a direct bearing on whether former president Kim Dae-jung will be able to go to Pyongyang by train, as he hopes, when he visits in late June.
The biggest point of contention in the abortive talks was that the North wants to redraw the maritime border in the West Sea from the Northern Limit Line (NLL) which South Korea takes as the de-facto border. The South stuck to its position that the issue must be dealt with between the defense chiefs as one of eight matters from a fundamental agreement of 1992, but the North kept trying to bring up the matter at the present meeting and would discuss nothing else. The two sides discussed making a joint press statement before wrapping up the talks but could not agree.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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