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Wednesday, Nov. 14, 2001

"Delegates failed to settle a dispute over the venues for the next economic and ministerial talks despite their last-ditch overnight negotiations," said an official at the Unification Ministry.

The two sides declared the end of the week-long talks at the closing plenary session early Wednesday without announcement of agreement. No date has been set for the next round of talks, indicating an uphill road to rapprochement between the Cold War rivals.

North Koreans, who have stalled peace talks in response to the South's anti-terrorism alert, demanded the South lift its alert before reviving exchange programs. The North Korean negotiators said their country would not send any delegates because of a "warlike situation" in the South. It demanded any future talks be held in the North's territory where "security is guaranteed."

South Korean negotiators rejected the North's security complaints as irrelevant, insisting inter-Korean meetings be open alternately in the South and the North.

The security dispute aborted hard-negotiated agreements during the talks to stage a new round of reunions of family members separated by a war five decades ago.

The South accepted the North's choice of its sealed-off mountain resort as the venue for temporary family reunions, saying the humanitarian program is the most urgent national task because time is running out for many of the family members who are now in their 70s and 80s. All past reunions were staged in Seoul and Pyongyang, the two Korean capitals, as the two sides allowed families to cross the heavily fortified border.

In return, South Korean delegates had demanded the next round of talks must be held in Seoul. The ministerial talks, which opened on Friday at the North's mountain for a four-day run, extended into Wednesday due to the disputes.

Analysts said inter-Korean dialogue and reconciliation process is expected to be deadlocked for a considerable time due to the collapse of the high-level talks. The critics said the South's public opinion was already soured in the wake of Pyongyang's boycott of recent reconciliation events.

The North abruptly scrapped scheduled visits between 100 family members from each side who have not met since the 1950-53 Korean War and exchanges of sports officials. The North blamed the delay on a security alert South Korea imposed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

The conservative opposition party in a statement called for the Kim Dae-jung administration to review its reconciliatory policy toward the North, saying the communist state has not yet changed its rigid stance against the South. But government officials vowed to press ahead with the reconciliatory efforts.

"Dialogue does not end with the rupture of this round. We will continue efforts," a senior government official said.

Copyright 2001 by United Press International. All rights reserved. Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
North Korea