Korean talks turn to reconciliation

Lim receives a bouquet of flowers from a North Korean girl upon his arrival at Pyongyang airport on Wednesday.

SEOUL, South Korea -- South Korea is urging the North to revive reconciliation talks as the two nations meet for the first time in five months.

South Korean special envoy Lim Dong-won, on a three-day visit to Pyongyang, urged North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to revive the stalled Korean peninsula reconciliation process, South Korean officials told Reuters news agency.

"Lim Dong-won relayed President Kim Dae-jung's appeal for peace on the Korean peninsula and discussed with Chairman Kim Jong-il issues of common concern," South Korean Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Hong-jae told reporters.

Kim Dae-jung's message urged a revival of reconciliation talks between the North and the South and broader talks between Pyongyang and both the United States and Japan.

The reconciliation statement came after the first day of inter-Korean peace talks ended without progress after North Korea blamed a freeze in dialogue on the Korean peninsula on Seoul and Washington.

"Both sides had open-hearted discussions, but the talks were not going smoothly," the Associated Press quoted South Korean spokesman Kim Hong-je as saying Thursday.

The talks are complicated by frosty relations between Washington and Pyongyang after the Bush administration branded the communist state as part of an 'axis of evil' bent on acquiring weapons of mass destruction.

The five-month diplomatic impasse was broken Wednesday when South Korean special envoy Lim Dong-won arrived in the North Korean capital for three days of talks with senior officials.

Reporting on Wednesday's meeting between Lim and North Korean senior ruling party official Kim Yong Sun, the state-run North Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) blamed Seoul and Washington for stalling rapprochement efforts.

North-South reconciliation "is facing a serious crisis due to the moves of the bellicose forces at home and abroad to provoke a war, our side noted, adding that not only the U.S. but the South side are to blame for this," KCNA said.

U.S. offer

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A declaration was signed during an historic summit in June, 2000 between North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and South Korean president Kim Dae-jung, that called for a series of exchanges and goodwill projects aimed at increasing ties between the two nations.

North and South were divided in 1945 and share one of the world's most heavily armed borders. Around 37,000 U.S. troops are currently stationed in South Korea following the 1950-53 Korean War.

Since the summit, inter-Korean ties have cooled, plummeting even lower when Bush took office last year.

Pyongyang has rejected offers of unconditional talks with the United States.

The Bush administration on Wednesday reiterated its willingness to resume dialogue with communist North Korea "anytime, anywhere."

"We continue to await a response from North Korea to our long-standing proposal to meet with them on broader issues of concern," White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said.

The White House has repeatedly accused North Korea of trying to develop weapons of mass destruction, claims that Pyongyang denies. North Korean officials also were angered by the revelation last month of a secret Pentagon review naming North Korea and six other nations as potential U.S. nuclear targets.

However, despite the lack of progress during the talks in Pyongyang there has been a hint that North Korea was warming to the prospect of dialogue with Washington.

'Slanders'

A KCNA report quoting a North Korean foreign ministry official said that Pyongyang had decided to resume the negotiations with an international group -- known as the Korean Peninsula Energy Development, or KEDO -- which oversees the building of two light-water nuclear reactors in the East Asian nation. (Full story)

KEDO was created in October 1994 under a joint U.S.-North Korea agreement -- the same talks at which Pyongyang agreed to freeze and ultimately dismantle its suspected nuclear program.

The KCNA report said that contacts were held by a North Korean representative and the White House's Director for Asian Affairs at the United Nations on March 13 and 20.

The report also said North Korea might call off talks if the White House expresses any "groundless slanders" -- an apparent reference to President Bush's inclusion of North Korea, along with Iraq and Iran, in an "axis of evil" in his State of the Union speech in January.

Despite the political development, Fleischer said the president will not necessarily avoid accusatory language such as including North Korea in an "axis of evil."

"The president will continue to speak out forthrightly about what he sees as ways to make peace throughout the world," Fleischer said.