By Bernama
Seoul : Seoul will not shy away from raising the North Korean nuclear issue in future talks with the communist state, Yonhap news agency quoted South Korea’s unification minister as saying Wednesday.
Kim Ha-joong also said his government will slow the pace of inter-Korean engagement until progress is made in six-party negotiations on dismantling the North’s nuclear programmes.
“We will deliver our and related countries’ position on the nuclear issue and call for North Korea to make a decision to scrap its nuclear programmes in inter-Korean dialogue,” the minister said in his first policy briefing to President Lee Myung-bak.
“The speed and scope of as well as ways to push for any development in inter-Korean relations will be decided according to progress in the North Korean nuclear issue,” Kim said.
Lee is South Korea’s first conservative president in a decade. His two predecessors were accused of making too many concessions to North Korea while largely refraining from criticism of the nuclear-armed state due to concern over the possibility of hindering reconciliation.
“There has been criticism that the Unification Ministry failed to make efforts to ease disputes among the people and listen to their opinion on unification issues,” Kim said before starting the briefing.
“I feel a deep sense of responsibility for such criticism. Now the ministry is going to change with a new resolution and attitude,” he added.
The multilateral process involving the United States, China, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas recently stalled over a dispute on a declaration of the North’s nuclear programmes and proliferation activities that Pyongyang agreed to submit before the end of 2007.
The North claims it submitted the list, while the U.S. said it has yet to receive a “complete and correct” declaration that includes the North’s suspected uranium enrichment programme and past and present nuclear cooperation with other countries.
Seoul will not agree on any inter-Korean economic cooperation programme if it is unlikely to get necessary public consent and produce a tangible result, the minister said.
He, however, did not mention whether big-budget cooperation projects agreed in the October summit between leaders to the two Koreas will be implemented as scheduled or not.
The Koreas agreed, in the summit, to expand the South Korea-funded industrial project in Kaesong, a North Korean border city, help repair major North Korean highways and railroads and establish an inter-Korean economic area in and around the North’s border port city of Haeju.
During the briefing, the minister also pledged to give policy priorities to the North’s return of South Korean prisoners of the 1950-53 Korean War and other kidnapped South Korean nationals and facilitating more temporary reunions of family members living separately for decades in the two Koreas.
North Korea insists it has been holding no South Korean citizens against their will.
Seoul will closely cooperate with the international community and human rights groups to improve North Korea’s human rights conditions, he added.