Koreas plan Doha march, North backs 2014 bid

SEOUL, Nov 28 (Reuters) North and South Korea are likely to march together at the start of this week's Asian Games and the North has given its support to a South Korean city's bid to host the 2014 Winter Olympics, officials said today.

North Korea said this month it was willing to put sports cooperation back on track with the South after halting projects in anger at Seoul's decision to take a tough stand against Pyongyang for its defiant July missile test.

''We are planning to march together at the Asian Games in Doha, and sports officials from the South and North will likely meet there to work out the final details,'' a South Korean Unification Ministry official said by telephone.

After entering the stadium together to start the games, the South and North would then compete as separate teams in Doha, other officials have said.

South Korea has also told the North it was willing to quickly resume talks on forming a joint Olympic team for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, said the Unification Ministry official, who asked not to be named.

Separately, a top official from the 2014 Pyeongchang Winter Olympic Games campaign committee returned from a trip last week to North Korea and said on Tuesday he had received an official commitment from Pyongyang to support the Olympic bid from the South.

''Through this agreement, I believe that North Korea has clearly declared its strong will that sport and political issues are separate issues,'' Kim Jin-sun, executive president of Pyeongchang's bid committee, told a news conference.

North Korea has linked sports to politics many times and tried to disrupt the 1988 Olympics in Seoul by blowing up a Korean Air passenger jet, killing more than 100 people on board.

WARMED CONSIDERABLY Ties between the two Koreas had warmed considerably over the past few years until Pyongyang raised regional security concerns through its missile test and Oct. 9 nuclear test.

The three finalists for the 2014 Winter Games are Pyeongchang, east of Seoul, Russia's Black Sea resort of Sochi and Salzburg, Austria. The International Olympic Committee will select the winning city in July next year.

Kim said the two Koreas would also discuss forming a joint team for the 2014 Winter Games.

Forming joint teams would be difficult, however. The South, with better-funded sports programmes and more world-class athletes, wants to field the most competitive team possible.

North Korea has said it wants to field a joint team with equal representation of athletes from the North and South.

Still technically at war because the 1950-1953 Korean War ended with a truce and not a peace treaty, North and South Korea first considered competing as a joint team at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo, but years of acrimony and military tensions have prevented it happening.

North and South Korea have marched together at past Olympics, including this year's Winter Games in Turin, but competed as separate teams.

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