 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
North Korea delivered a stinging rejection of the South's proposal for a series of three presidential summits over the next year, giving a blow-by-blow account on Wednesday of a secret meeting between officials of the two countries last month. A spokesman for the National Defence Commission, the North's supreme leadership body, said a trio of South Korean officials – from the presidential office, intelligence service and the Unification Ministry –had tried to persuade the North during a meeting in Beijing to agree to the summits in order to defuse tensions. The North's representatives "told them to go back to Seoul at once," he said, according to state media in an embarrassing outline of the meeting. Seoul said it was regrettable the North had provided such a one-sided account and that this would not help improve Korean relations, but added it stood by its call for dialogue. The announcement came two days after the same North Korean commission said it would no longer deal with conservative South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, and that it was cutting two of the few remaining channels of inter-Korean dialogue. "We have made it clear there would never be a summit meeting as long as the South maintains a hostile policy and insists (North Korea) should abandon its nuclear program and apologize over the two incidents," KCNA state news agency quoted the commission spokesman as saying. "The National Defence Commission spokesman's announcement today… is a one-sided claim that distorted our true motive and we find it unnecessary to deal with it," retorted a Unification Ministry spokesman in Seoul. Lee ended a decade of unconditional aid to the North when he took office in 2008 and demanded Pyongyang's leader disarm as a condition for resuming aid and dialogue. Last month, North Korea dismissed Lee's offer to Kim Jong-il to join a nuclear summit in Seoul next year, saying it was "ridiculous" that the South was hosting the event. Both China and the US have urged the rivals to return to the negotiating table to sort out their differences to allow for the resumption of nuclear talks. Reuters |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
