NKorea seeks aid amid diplomacy on nuke arms

Seoul, Mar 1: North Korea is seeking humanitarian aid at talks with the South, an official said today, signalling Pyongyang was trying to cash in on a reduction of tensions on the Korean peninsula.

But South Korea has said the resumption of full-scale bilateral humanitarian aid depends on the North keeping to an agreement to begin dismantling its nuclear programme.

At the first high-level meeting between the two Koreas since the North's nuclear test in October, officials from both sides pored over how and when to resume commercial projects and family reunions stalled since last year.

The Korea talks are part of the most intense multinational diplomacy focused on the North since the beginning of the Bush administration in the United States and since a defunct 1994 North Korea nuclear deal.

''The North side started raising the issue of humanitarian aid at the working-level contact on February 28,'' a South Korean official involved in the talks in Pyongyang told reporters.

It was not clear what kind of aid the North wants, he added.

South Korea had been a major donor of food and fertiliser to the impoverished North until shipments were halted in July after North Korea launched a series of missiles that month.

The inter-Korean talks were suspended in the wake of those tests.

Diplomatic Flurry

''The draft of a joint press statement that's been exchanged does not include direct references to rice or fertiliser aid,'' the official told South Korean reporters in Pyongyang.

Foreign journalists are excluded from coverage of talks that are held in North Korea.

As officials take up the question of aid and humanitarian work in Pyongyang, diplomats from countries involved in the six-way nuclear talks on Pyongyang's nuclear programme are set to resume discussions on implementing a breakthrough February 13 deal.

North Korea and Japan were set to begin talks in Hanoi next week on normalising ties and North Korean envoy Kim Kye-gwan is due in Washington to discuss normalising ties with the United States next week, all under the February 13 agreement.

Discussions about what North Korea has done to suspend its nuclear activities in return for fuel oil shipment from the other parties are also expected in the coming weeks.

North Korea has said that improving ties with Japan and the United States was a key prerequisite to dismantling its nuclear arms programme, which it says was for self-defence.

The inter-Korean meeting in Pyongyang began on Tuesday and was scheduled to end tomorrow.

South Korea is seeking a swift resumption of reunions of families separated since the 1950-53 Korean War. It also wants answers on the estimated 1,000 or so South Korean prisoners of war and civilian abductees believed to be held in the North.

Reuters

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