Effort for peace: SKorea, NKorea to hold summit after seven years

SEOUL: North and South Korea announced on Wednesday they will hold their second-ever summit this month in an attempt to bring lasting peace to a peninsula divided for 60 years by minefields and barbed wire.

President Roh Moo-Hyun and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il will meet in Pyongyang from August 28-30, the Seoul presidential office and the North's official media said.

It will be only the second leaders' meeting in the history of the hardline communist North and the capitalist South. The first, in 2000, ushered in a new era of reconciliation marked by economic joint projects and family reunions.

South Korea said the summit was proposed by the North, which tested its first nuclear weapon last October but is moving towards shutting down its atomic programme under a six-nation agreement.

The North's official Korean Central News Agency said the meeting would be "of weighty significance in opening a new phase of peace."

A Seoul presidential office statement said Roh and Kim would discuss a formal peace treaty. The two countries have remained technically at war since 1953, when the Korean conflict ended in an armistice and not a peace pact.

"The two leaders, through this summit, will be able to expand military trust-building measures and pave the way for establishing a peace regime on the Korean peninsula," it said.

"The talks will also provide momentum to settle the North Korean nuclear problem." 

The US State Department said it hoped the meeting would help fulfil the goals of the six-nation talks.

Japan, which has tense relations with North Korea, also voiced hope the summit will promote peace. China's foreign ministry said it "supports everything that will benefit peace and stability on the Korean peninsula and in Northeast Asia."

The North last month shut down its Yongbyon reactor, which produced plutonium for nuclear bombs. It has pledged to disable its atomic programmes permanently in return for energy aid worth hundreds of millions of dollars and major diplomatic and security benefits.

Kim Man-bok, chief of South Korea's National Intelligence Service, told a news conference he secretly visited North Korea twice earlier this month to arrange the summit. 

"Recently, inter-Korean relations and the political situation are  improving. The current timing is the most appropriate period" for a summit, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il was quoted as saying.

The intelligence chief said his northern counterpart Kim Yang-Gon relayed the comments from the leader.

President Roh said the meeting would help normalise the North's relations with the world.

"The second inter-Korean summit will help normalise inter-Korean relations and provide fresh momentum to improve North Korea's relations with international society," he was quoted by his spokesman as saying.

The summit announcement comes some four months before a presidential election in which pro-government parties trail the conservative opposition Grand National Party (GNP) in opinion polls.

The GNP dismissed the meeting as an election stunt to boost the chances of Roh's preferred presidential candidate.

It said the timing and venue were inappropriate and the meeting would end up showering the North with "ridiculously generous" aid.

Some 20 conservative activists burned a North Korean flag and sprayed ink on the portraits of Roh and Kim during a rally near Seoul's presidential office.

Analysts agreed that Kim Jong-Il wants summit deals before an expected election victory by the GNP, which has taken a harder line with the North and is reviled by Pyongyang's official media.

"The Pyongyang regime seems to be worried about the direction of inter-Korean relations if the GNP has an election victory," said Dongguk University professor Koh Yu-Hwan.

Presidential adviser Baek Jong-Chun said the timing had nothing to do with domestic politics. Officials will meet soon at the North's border city of Kaesong to make arrangements for the summit.