Korean leaders issue peace call, seek formal end to Korean War

By Michael Ireland
Chief Correspondent, ASSIST News Service

PYNGYANG, NORTH KOREA (ANS) -- Foreign policy analysts are now taking a good look at the fine print after leaders of the two Koreas agreed on Thursday to try to bring peace to the Cold War's last frontier, just a day after the North signed up to an international deal to disable its nuclear facilities.

The leaders of South and North Korea after issuing the joint declaration.

According to Jonathan Thatcher. Reuters news service in Seoul, South Korea, some analysts said the pledges at only the second summit between North and South Korea were limited, with the hermit North clearly reluctant to break much new ground.

"North and South Korea shared the view they must end the current armistice and build a permanent peace regime," President Roh Moo-hyun and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il said in a joint statement at the end of their three-day meeting in Pyongyang.

Reuters says they will push for talks next month with China and the United States to formally end the 1950-53 Korean War, which technically is still going on because a peace treaty has yet to be signed.

The news agency reports that if Beijing and Washington did agree, it would mark an end at last to the Cold War in the region, but the United States has already made clear that one condition would be for Pyongyang to give up all nuclear weapons -- something the North shows no sign of being in a hurry to do.

The two leaders also agreed to set up the first regular freight train service for half a century, linking two countries divided by a heavily fortified border. There will also be meetings of ministers and defense officials and the establishment of a cooperation zone around a contested sea border on the west of the Korean peninsula, Reuters says.

The summit ended just a day after North Korea agreed to disable the three main nuclear facilities at its Yongbyon site -- and a source of material for atomic weapons -- and provide a full declaration of all its nuclear programs by the end of the year.

U.S. President George W. Bush was quick to praise the nuclear deal with North Korea, a country he once linked with Iran and pre-invasion Iraq as members of an "axis of evil. He even held up North Korea as a possible model for resolving the nuclear standoff with Iran, the news agency said in an online report contributed to by by Jack Kim, Jessica Kim and Jon Herskovitz in Seoul and Chris Buckley in Beijing.

Roh Moo-hyun and Kim Jong-il exchange the historic declaration.

South Korea's President Roh left Pyongyang, where thousands lined the streets waving plastic flowers and cheering "hurray" as his motorcade headed to the South. He went to the summit declaring it would make the peninsula safer and help the North's shattered economy, but many analysts were doubtful he would be able to win concessions from the reclusive Kim.

Reuters says that even Roh said he found it difficult to break down a wall of mistrust from Kim, whom analysts say fears that opening up his secretive state too much to foreign influence could undermine the personality cult around his rule and threaten his own position.

"I expected much stronger results such as large-scale aid or support for North Korea. The results are more moderate than I had expected," said Kim Young-yoon, an analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification.

"South Korea very aggressively proposed many projects and businesses but on the other hand North Korea seems to have been passive and not willing to accept all of them," Young-yoon told Reuters.

South Korean officials say relations can improve only gradually and that a collapse of the North would be so catastrophic for wealthy South Korea that they were prepared to pump billions of dollars into their neighbor's economy.

"This is an event that will open a new horizon between North and South Korea," presidential spokesman Kim Jeong-suob told reporters in Seoul.

Wednesday's agreement to disable the Yongbyon complex came a year after North Korea tested a nuclear device, earning it international sanctions that analysts say have hit hard.

Reuters reports the deal essentially puts North Korea back to where it was over a decade ago -- as Kim Jong-il was taking over from his father as the North's autocratic ruler -- when it agreed to freeze its nuclear program in exchange for aid.

However, the news agency says, it is full of ambiguity and key issues still to be clarified include a suspected uranium enrichment program, which could be another way to make fissile material for atomic weapons.

Also unclear, the agency says, is how much fissile material the North has already stashed away -- some experts say enough for several warheads.

A number of analysts have said it will take an extremely high price for paranoid North Korea to agree to completely give up nuclear weapons it sees as about the only leverage it has to deal with a hostile world. Many point to Kim's record of not sticking to agreements.

The greatest prize the North seeks, they say, is normal relations with the United States, which would bring an end to its pariah status as a state that sponsors terrorism and a chance to tap directly into the global economy.

This time the aid has already started to trickle in, with the United States the next country scheduled sometime this month to send in 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil, or its equivalent.

The Reuters reports says that if North Korea keeps its word, the agreement will eventually give the energy-starved country around 1 million tons of oil.

"A virtuous circle," said South Korea's Prime Minister Han Duck-soo of the combination of the summit and a nuclear deal.

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), in its online report states the leaders of North and South Korea have signed a joint declaration calling for a permanent peace deal on the Korean Peninsula, with South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun and the North's Kim Jong-il issuing the declaration after a three-day historic summit in Pyongyang.

The agreement came a day after the North agreed to end its nuclear plans and leaders of both Koreas called for international talks on a treaty to replace the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War.

Officials involved in separate, international talks aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear program confirmed that Pyongyang had committed to a timetable to disable its nuclear facilities, the BBC said.

Mr Roh and Mr Kim shook hands and drank a toast after they signed the eight-point declaration.

The agreement stated: "The South and North share the view that they should end the current armistice system and build up a permanent peace system."

The BBC says the agreement called for leaders of nations concerned to meet on the Korean Peninsula and agree an end to the 1950-1953 war. Any such talks would probably involve the US and China which, along with North Korea, signed the armistice that ended the war. South Korea did not sign and remains technically at war with the North. The summit is only the second between leaders of the two nations.

The two sides also agreed to resume freight rail services across the heavily fortified border for the first time in more than five decades. And the North Korean leader used the occasion to quash speculation that he was suffering from ill health.

"South Korean media reported that I have diabetes and even heart disease, but the fact is that is not the case at all," Mr Kim told delegates at the farewell luncheon.

Agreements were also reached on establishing a joint fishing zone in the disputed western sea border and on holding regular summits, although no timetable was given for these. More reunions between families divided by the partitioning of the Korean Peninsula would be held, the declaration said.

The BBC's John Sudworth in Seoul says that, while there is a sense that history is being made, the detail of the declaration will be important.

A similar optimism surrounded the first summit seven years ago, attended by former South Korean leader Kim Dae-jung, but many people feel very little has really changed, the BBC correspondent adds.

The BBC also said that on Wednesday, officials involved in six-party talks on the North's nuclear ambitions revealed that Pyongyang had formally committed to disabling its Yongbyon reactor and related sites, and fully disclosing all aspects of its nuclear program by the end of the year. Yongbyon, the North's main reactor, was closed earlier this year in return for aid, as part of the first phase of the deal. A US-led team of experts is to go to North Korea in the next two weeks to begin the process.

The final crucial phase of the deal -- where North Korea surrenders its existing nuclear stockpile -- is due to be implemented next year.

US President George W Bush has welcomed the agreement, but Japan -- one of the six countries involved in the talks -- remained cautious. On Thursday its ruling party backed extending sanctions against North Korea, citing a lack of progress in a row over Japanese nationals abducted by Pyongyang.

North Korea carried out its first nuclear test in October 2006.

From Seoul, South Korea CNN reported that North Korea and South Korea on Thursday agreed to begin work on a peace plan that would officially put an end to the Korean War.

CNN says North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun signed an eight-point agreement in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, pledging to replace the cease-fire accord signed at the end of the Korean War.

"South and North Korea agree on (the) need to end the current armistice and establish permanent peace," the fourth point of the agreement says. In addition, the two sides will push "for a declaration of the ending of the Korean War in cooperation with neighboring nations."

The nations have remained technically at war for 54 years; an armistice was signed on July 27, 1953. The pact also calls for a "smooth implementation" of the six-party nuclear agreements inked earlier in the year that will lead to the shutdown of North Korea's nuclear facilities and disable them.

The reclusive communist nation has agreed to disable nuclear facilities at its main Yongbyon reactor complex by December 31, according to a joint six-nation agreement released Wednesday by China, CNN said.

A U.S. team, including technical experts, will head to North Korea next week and take the lead in making sure the nuclear facilities are disabled, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said Wednesday.

The reconciliation pact also calls for North and South Korean leaders to meet often for discussions on "pending issues," including a meeting between Korean prime ministers in Seoul in November.Military ministers for the two Koreas will meet in Pyongyang on Friday.

Economic cooperation and a proposed exchange of video letters between families separated by the divided Korean peninsula also featured on the long list of agreements reached during the summit. The formal talks between Kim and Roh, which opened on Wednesday, marked the first summit between the split nations in seven years.

South Korea declined a request by Kim for Roh to extend the summit one day, according to South Korean reporters covering the summit in Pyongyang.

According to the South Korean press corps, Kim said, "How about returning to Seoul on Friday after having a leisurely lunch tomorrow and do the things originally planned for this afternoon?"

On Tuesday Roh became the first South Korean leader to walk across the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone between the two countries. His predecessor, Kim Dae-jung, flew to Pyongyang for the first Korean leaders summit in 2000.

"As president, I'm crossing this forbidden line this time," Roh said. "After I'm back, I hope that more people will follow suit, and then this forbidden line will eventually be erased."

TIMELINE FOR THE TWO KOREAS:

1910: Korean Peninsula colonized by Japan
1945: Divided into US-backed South and Soviet-backed North
1950-1953: Korean War, no peace deal signed
1987: North Korea bombs a South airliner, killing 115
1990s: South Korea introduces conciliatory Sunshine Policy
2000: Kim Jong-il and Kim Dae-jung hold first leaders' summit
2007: Kim Jong-il and Roh Moo-hyun hold second leaders' summit

Michael Ireland is an international British freelance journalist. A former reporter with a London newspaper, Michael is the Chief Correspondent for ASSIST News Service of Lake Forest, California. Michael immigrated to the United States in 1982 and became a US citizen in September, 1995. He is married with two children. Michael has also been a frequent contributor to UCB Europe, a British Christian radio station.