Joint Statement from Inter-Korean Cabinet-level Talks

A meeting between the President-elect, Roh Moo-hyun, and the visiting chief northern delegate, Kim Ryong Song, who is attending the 9th inter-Korean cabinet-level talks, seems not likely.

"We have not discussed the issue of having a meeting between the President-elect and Mr. Kim," said Lee Bong-jo, spokesman for the South Korean delegation and senior official with the Ministry of Unification, coming out of the contact between the representatives of the two delegations on Jan. 23.

On the third day of the talks, the delegations from North and South Korea had working level talks and a contact between the chiefs in a row, and began to fine-tune the wording of the joint statement.

In particular, the South made efforts to persuade the North into including a message that is clearer than the North’s announcement on the previous day that it has any intention of producing nuclear weapons. However, the two sides are reported to have difficulties in this regard, because the North wants to put the spirit of the two Koreas’ mutual cooperation as a single people in the statement.

In addition to the mutual cooperation, the first draft of the statement suggested by Pyongyang is said to include wordings like "joint efforts to guarantee peace and security on the Korean peninsula," "solving all matters including the nuclear crisis through dialogue," and "The North has no intention of developing nuclear weapons," which was also shown in a keynote speech at a plenary session on Jan. 22.

Meanwhile, for the cabinet-level meeting between the two Koreas in Seoul White House spokesman Ari Flesher on Jan. 22 commented, "U.S. President George W. Bush has thought it encouraging that the South has a dialogue with the North to engage it."

Asked about the North Korea nuclear crisis and the inter-Korean ministerial meeting in a regular press briefing, the White House spokesman pointed out that the point of contention between the U.S. and the impoverished communist country was more than that and that the issue should be solved not bilaterally but within the international framework.

Dong-Ki Sung esprit@donga.com