South Korea snubs North

2006-07-07 07:19

Seoul - South Korea rejected dialogue with North Korea on Friday for the first time since they began to reconcile in 2000, shunning talks on easing border tension due to Pyongyang's missile launches this week.

The move was South Korea's latest effort to balance its "sunshine policy" with pressure on its communist neighbor, which defied weeks of appeals by launching seven missiles on Wednesday, including a long-range Taepodong-2.

North Korea called for a working-level military contact with South Korea at Panmunjom, a truce village on the world's last Cold War frontier, in a telephone message two days before its missile launch.

"Our side has decided to put off the meeting because of missile launches," the South Korean defense ministry said in a statement.

The meeting, which North Korea asked to have on Friday, was to discuss preparations for general-level talks. The previous inter-Korean military meeting in May bogged down over a dispute on a maritime border.

"It is very regrettable that North Korea's proposal came just just a few days before the missile launch," Colonel Moon Sung-Mook, chief of the ministry's North Korea policy team, told reporters.

Missile launches a successful exercise

It marked the first time that South Korea has rejected a proposal for talks with the North since 2000, when leaders of the neighbours held a landmark summit that launched the path of reconciliation.

South Korea had earlier played down US warnings of a North Korean missile launch.

It condemned the tests and said it was considering cancelling a shipment of humanitarian aid and ministerial level reconciliation talks scheduled next week in South Korea's second largest city, Busan.

Unification Minister Lee Jong-Seok indicated, however, that he leant towards going ahead with the meeting with his counterpart from the North.

"The South Korean government wonders what it would mean if we refuse to talk to North Korea," he said on Thursday.

North Korea called its missile launches a successful exercise to boost its self-defense in the face of US hostility and pledged to fire more.

South Korean airlines were asked on Friday to avoid airspace near North Korea until July 11 due to possible missile launches.

- AFP