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Koreas seek progress in economic talks

2004-03-03

South and North Korea will open talks on Tuesday (Mar. 2) in Seoul to discuss ways to promote joint economic projects in the communist state.

They will discuss construction of an industrial complex in the North, linking of cross-border roads and railways, and other pending issues during the eighth meeting of the inter-Korean Economic Cooperation and Promotion Committee, Seoul officials said.

The discussions, the first inter-Korean economic session of the year, come three days after six-party talks over Pyongyang's nuclear program ended in Beijing with modest progress.

Experts expect the two sides to engage in substantive dialogue during the four-day meeting because countries at the six-party talks agreed on the need for a nuclear-weapons-free peninsula and to continue dialogue on the nuclear issue.

The 16-month-old nuclear crisis has been a major obstacle to economic cooperation between the two Koreas. Seoul has linked economic projects to elimination of the nuclear stalemate but its cash-starved neighbor to the North has insisted on rapid economic cooperation regardless of nuclear progress.

"Both sides will be able to tackle economic cooperation projects more freely as countries last week laid the groundwork for a peaceful settlement to the nuclear crisis," said Prof. Koh Yu-hwan of Dongguk University.

Seoul is cautious to fully accelerate joint economic ventures amid the continued deadlock while Pyongyang is determined to push its prosperous neighbor to expand economic cooperation by emphasizing the spirit of inter-Korean coalition, he said.

Delegates from the South and the North will focus their discussions on how to speed up construction of an industrial park in the North's southern city of Gaeseong.

The sides agreed during last month's ministerial meeting to build a 10,000-pyeong model complex within the park by the first half of this year. One pyeong is about 3.3 square meters.

Seoul delegates headed by Vice Finance and Economy Minister Kim Gwang-lim will propose before the summer rainy season that the two sides join forces to prevent the Imjin River along their shared border from flooding nearby areas.

Meanwhile, Pyongyang officials are expected to ask for energy aid, as well as repeating their demand for speedy progress of the ongoing economic projects.

South Korea proposed offering energy aid to the communist North in return for a freeze of its nuclear weapons program at last week's second round of six-party talks also involving the United States, China, Japan and Russia.

China and Russia supported the proposal, while the United States and Japan expressed their "understanding" but did not agree.

Source : www.korea.net