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By Jia Cheng South Korea dismissed the North's latest accusation that Seoul had refused dialogue and driven inter-Korean relations to catastrophe, saying Pyongyang was determined to keep its nuclear weapons despite diplomatic efforts to resume the stalled Six-Party Talks. South Korea's Unification Minister Hyun In-taek on Monday blamed North Korea's "deceptive" appeals for dialogue, and said that the recent overtures appeared to be a classic case of North Korea's deceptive "peace offensive," which he termed a worn-out tactic, according to AFP. He also denounced North Korea's intransigence for the uncertainty, saying it had refused to make any apology for its attacks and had broken vows of denuclearization. Hyun's statement came a day after Pyongyang said Seoul and Washington have staged drills aimed at raising tensions, and accused South Korea of shunning dialogue with the North. Earlier on Monday, South Korea deployed rocket artillery on two islands near its tense maritime border with the North, according to the Chosun Ilbo newspaper. The move was designed to guard against attacks similar to the one on Yeonpyeong last year. Yang Bojiang, an expert on Northeast Asia at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, told the Global Times that South Korea would not give up on demanding that North Korea make an apology for two deadly attacks last year, declaring this as a precondition to future inter-Korean talks. The political season has arrived in South Korea, as the country prepares for next year's general and presidential races, and President Lee Myung-bak is keeping a tough stance toward North Korea in a bid to secure his conservative base, Yang added. The conflict between the two Koreas continued amid a flurry of international efforts to reengage inter-Korean dialogue and broad Six-Party Talks. Former US president Jimmy Carter said on Monday that he hopes to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-il during a visit this week, Reuters reported. "Concerning the nuclear issue, we will report as accurately as we can after we visit North Korea of what they had to say, but we're not prejudging in advance what our experience in Pyongyang will be," Carter said on Monday. Agencies contributed to this story |
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