Posted on 06/23/2005 6:56:05 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
North Korea Complains About Bush Meeting
By BURT HERMAN, Associated Press Writer
Thu Jun 23, 6:38 AM ET
SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea condemned President Bush for meeting a prominent defector detained as a child in a prison camp, saying Thursday the move chilled the atmosphere for a return to nuclear disarmament talks.
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Meanwhile, a high-ranking North Korean delegation in Seoul held a rare meeting with South Korea's president as the two sides discussed family reunions and military contacts across their Cold War border. The talks between the divided Koreas are running alongside efforts to coax the North back to arms negotiations.
South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun urged North Korea's leader Kim Jong Il to seek a peaceful resolution of the nuclear issue as soon as possible during his talks with North Korean chief Cabinet counselor Kwon Ho Ung, Roh's spokesman told Yonhap news agency.
The two sides scheduled a closing session Thursday evening, indicating they had neared completion of their talks and reached agreement on a joint statement.
Bush met last week at the White House with Kang Chol Hwan, a defector now working as a journalist in the South and author of "The Aquariums of Pyongyang," detailing his life in a North Korean prison where he was incarcerated as a child with his family.
Referring to Kang as "human trash," the North's official Korean Central News Agency said Washington's calls for improved human rights in the communist nation show it "has yet to come up with a firm position that it would recognize and respect (the North) as a negotiating partner."
"It cannot be interpreted as anything other than a move pouring cold water" on efforts to resume the nuclear talks, KCNA wrote in a commentary.
Just last week, the North's reclusive Kim held a surprise meeting with a visiting South Korean envoy that raised hopes of the country's return to the talks it has boycotted for a year.
The talks last convened one year ago. The North has refused to return, citing "hostile" U.S. policies.
The U.S. government said Wednesday it would provide 50,000 tons of food to North Korea in a humanitarian decision unrelated to efforts to convince Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons program.
At this week's talks between the two Koreas, South Korea has proposed that the sides resume military talks next month. It also requested that family reunions at the North's Diamond Mountain resort restart in August, and that relatives unable to make the trip be allowed to see each other via the Internet.
As the talks opened Wednesday, South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young urged the North to make good on Kim's pledge and rejoin the nuclear negotiations in July. The North has insisted at earlier negotiations with the South that the nuclear issue can only be resolved with Washington.
North Korea repeated at the Seoul talks that it wouldn't need any nuclear weapons if Washington would drop its allegedly hostile policies toward the North.
The North was expected to push the South to meet a request for 150,000 tons of fertilizer. South Korea has already sent 200,000 tons to the North this year to help support its agriculture, which fails to provide enough food for its people.
The Cabinet-level talks in Seoul are the highest regular contact between the North and South, and this week's session is the 15th since a landmark 2000 summit between their leaders. Contacts resumed last month after the North severed them for 10 months in anger over mass defections of its citizens to the South.
Ping!
When the temperature is down to a couple hundred below zero, further chilling is somewhat academic, isn't it?
I don't give a flying freak at a rolling donut less about N. Korea's complaints.
This is a book that everyone should read. I believe that I understand NK a lot more clearly having read about the gulags (can I use the expression?) of the North.
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