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Top-level Korean talks fail
26/07/2007 10:01 - (SA)
Panmunjom, South Korea - High-level military talks between South and North Korea broke down on Thursday due to differences over their disputed sea border.
"We've come to a conclusion that we don't need these fruitless talks any more," North Korea's chief delegate Lieutenant-General Kim Yong-Chol said on the third and final day of the meeting at the border truce village of Panmunjom.
A red-faced and apparently angry Kim attacked the South for refusing to discuss replacing the Northern Limit Line in the Yellow Sea with a new maritime border, calling the current line "illegal".
The Northern Limit Line, drawn up by United Nations forces at the end of the 1950-1953 Korean War, has been a potential flashpoint in recent years. The North refuses to recognise it.
Six South Koreans were killed in a clash in June 2002 in the area, while in June 1999 a similar skirmish killed dozens of North Korean sailors.
The North says the South's warships continue to fuel tensions by violating its waters in the area, accusations rejected by Seoul as groundless.
The general-level talks were aimed at discussing ways to prevent further clashes and other security issues. They come amid a wider easing of tensions after the North shut the reactor which supplied its nuclear weapons programme.
But the South refuses to accept the North's insistence that talks must be held on redrawing the sea border to avoid further naval incidents.
The South said the two sides should handle issues that are easier to settle, such as the opening of a hotline between Navy commanders to prevent armed confrontations.
"It is highly regrettable that we have to wrap up the three days of talks with no concrete results," a tense-looking Major-General Jung Seung-Jo, the head of the South's delegation, told Kim.
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