Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

DATE=4/21/03

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

TITLE=KOREAS TALKS (L)

NUMBER=2-302393

BYLINE=STEVE HERMAN

DATELINE=TOKYO

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: South Korea has accepted a proposal from

Pyongyang to hold cabinet-level talks in the North in a week. Those talks will follow a meeting between North Korea and the United States in Beijing. As Steve Herman reports, Pyongyang seems to backing away from recent belligerent statements to make sure the meetings go ahead.

TEXT: South Korea's Unification Ministry said on

Monday it has accepted the offer of talks from North Korea. The ministry says the discussions will start in Pyongyang on April 27th. The cabinet-level talks originally were set for earlier this month, but North Korea canceled them. Pyongyang also suspended two other sets of talks.

The news of renewed inter-Korean discussion comes just days before talks involving the United States, North Korea and China begin in Beijing. That meeting will be the first formal contact between Washington and Pyongyang since the United States said in October that North Korea had an illegal nuclear weapons program.

On Friday, it appeared the Beijing meeting could be canceled, after North Korea said it was reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rods. The reprocessed fuel can be used to make nuclear bombs.

However, the United States has indicated the talks will go ahead. And on Monday, North Korea revised its statement, saying it is "successfully going forward to reprocess" the rods, but indicating it is not actually doing so yet.

Kim Tae Woo is a nuclear weapons analyst at the South Korea Institute of Defense Analyses. He says this sort of vague statement is typical for North Korea. He thinks there was no mistranslation of the original North Korean statement.

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We South Koreans are very much accustomed to that. . North Korea has been giving, purposefully, I think, giving lots of strategic ambiguity about their actions and capabilities.

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Mr. Kim adds that if North Korea actually is reprocessing the fuel, the United States will likely push for sanctions against Pyongyang and toughen its demand that the North give up its weapons program before Washington will discuss any other matters.

The nuclear dispute has escalated over the past several months. North Korea withdrew from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, re-opened idled nuclear facilities and engaged in such acts as testing short-range missiles and sending fighter jets into South Korean air space.

North Korea on Sunday repeated allegations that the United States is planning to attack it and called on Koreans worldwide to help defend the country. The U-S government has said for months that it believes its differences with North Korea can be resolved peacefully. (Signed)

NEB/HK/SH/KPD