Inter-Korean ministerial talks in Busan collapsed on Thursday when neither side would budge on widely divergent agendas. The South wanted to talk about North Korea¡¯s missile test last week and its return to six-party talks on its nuclear program. The North was having none of it. ¡°The inter-Korean ministerial talks are not military talks, let alone six-party talks,¡± the North Korean delegation led by Senior Cabinet Counselor Kwon Ho-ung said in a statement. ¡°The responsibility for our withdrawal from the talks falls entirely on the South¡± for pursuing ¡°an unreasonable agenda from the first day by raising irrelevant issues¡± and refusing to discuss the matters the North wanted to talk about.
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North Korean Chief Cabinet Councilor Kwon Ho-ung leaves a hotel in Busan for the airport after inter-Korean ministerial talks collapsed on Thursday./Yonhap
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It fulminated the South Korean delegation ¡°should pay the price in front of the Korean people for abandoning the high-level talks, which were realized at great pains, and producing devastating results whose outcome for the inter-Korean relations is beyond description.¡± It warned it will make ¡°a thorough study¡± of what the South did to scupper the talks. The delegation denied knowledge of missile tests ¡°because the military is in charge of them¡± but insisted Seoul provide 500,000 tons of rice as promised, saying no conditions must be attached to humanitarian aid.
The debacle leaves the Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok and President Roh Moo-hyun, who had insisted on going ahead with the talks despite qualms in other departments, with egg on their faces. ¡°The decision to hold the talks under such circumstances is fatally wrong,¡± security expert Hong Kwan-hee said. ¡°It was obvious from the moment President Roh took sides with the unification minister that they would only end up giving the North a propaganda platform.¡±
¡°It was pretty sure that the talks would end without producing meaningful results, so we could have conveyed the message we wanted just canceling them,¡± said Prof. Yoo Kil-jae of Kyungnam University¡¯s Institute for Far Eastern Studies. ¡°What is more serious is that the U.S. and Japan will look down on us for having held the talks at this point in time.¡± Worse, the North Korean tantrum demanding Seoul ¡°should pay¡± for abandoning the talks could cost the South a dialogue channel with Pyongyang.
However, a high-ranking government official claimed success. ¡°Our goal in the talks was to deliver our opinion about recent developments to the North Korean leadership and to maintain the dialogue channel between the two Koreas,¡± he said. ¡°We expected things to turn out the way they did.¡±
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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