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Four-Way Talks On Korean Peace Open in Geneva
By Clare Nullis
Associated Press
Wednesday, December 10, 1997; Page A28
"Ongoing" was all North Korea's delegation leader, Kim Gye Gwan, would say to describe the talks as they adjourned until Wednesday. Diplomats from two other participating countries -- the United States and China -- made no public comment.
But South Korea's chief delegate, Lee See Young, said he stressed during the meeting the importance of reopening dialogue between the two Koreas. According to Lee, North Korea repeated two of its longstanding demands: withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Korea and the conclusion of a peace treaty with the United States, excluding the South.
Analysts say the negotiations could drag on for years but that just getting the two rival Korean states together to discuss a lasting peace is a major breakthrough.
"The shadow of the Cold War is still hanging over the Korean Peninsula," Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan said in an opening speech. "We know for sure that the future course will still be long and difficult; nevertheless, we have already struck a good beginning."
In Washington, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen and his South Korean counterpart, Kim Dong Jin, said the talks "provide the most realistic means to reduce tensions and achieve lasting peace on the Korean peninsula." In a joint statement, they expressed "the hope that all participants would make sincere efforts to achieve substantial progress."
Senior diplomats from China -- one of North Korea's last remaining allies and its chief defender during the 1950-53 Korean War -- and the United States, which has maintained a strong military presence in the South since the war, are taking part as mediators.
One of the many stumbling blocks to progress in the talks is the North Korean demand for the withdrawal of 37,000 U.S. troops stationed in the South. South Korean journalists, briefed by diplomats, said the North Koreans also pressed the U.S. delegation to end a nearly half-century-old American economic blockade on their country and to begin direct talks between Washington and Pyongyang on normalizing relations.
The four-way negotiations here became possible last month when North Korea -- squeezed by economic collapse and looming famine -- dropped its insistence that a U.S. troop withdrawal from the South be made a specific agenda item. The United States and South Korea have refused to consider a U.S. pullback, maintaining that the troops are necessary to ward off any invasion from the North.
© Copyright 1997 The Associated Press
