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Unification Minister Lee Jae-joung on Monday said Seoul will start sending rice aid to Pyongyang once North Korea starts meeting its obligations under a Feb. 13 six-nation agreement. He indicated the North can get rice aid if it honors just one of the requirements -- shutting down its nuclear facilities in Yongbyon or readmitting inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Lee told a KBS Radio program Monday the denuclearization process ¡°can be said to have begun if North Korea takes one of the initial implementation measures.¡± Considering that shipping 400,000 tons of rice to the North takes about four months, the South can provide aids once Pyongyang starts implementing the initial measures.
The government agreed to resume rice aid to North Korea in the latest inter-Korean economic cooperation talks, which ended Sunday. Seoul made it clear that the aid will depend on how sincerely North Korea fulfills the initial obligations but was unable to put it in writing.
The unification minister also said on MBC Radio that yet another cancellation of a trial run of cross-border railways would severely strain inter-Korean relations. In the economic cooperation talks, the two Koreas once again agreed to conduct a test run of the Donghae and Gyeongui lines in the East and West on May 17. They already agreed three times since 2004 to conduct a trial run of the railways, but each time they floundered on last-minute resistance from the North Korean military.
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Meanwhile, Lee announced a plan to sell the remaining 1.75 million sq. m in the inter-Korean Kaesong Industrial Complex in the North starting from April 30. Sale of the land was indefinitely postponed after North Korea test-fired missiles last July.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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