North Korea Rejects Invitation by South’s Lee for Summit on Nuclear Plans
North Korea Rejects Invitation by Lee Myung Bak for Summit
Ahn Young Joon/AFP/Getty Images
North Korean soldiers look at the southern side at the truce village of Panmunjom.
North Korean soldiers look at the southern side at the truce village of Panmunjom. Photographer: Ahn Young Joon/AFP/Getty Images
South Korean soldiers patrol along the barbed-wire fence near Imjingak peace park where activists released balloons carrying anti-North Korea leaflets in Paju near near the demilitarized zone (DMZ) separating the two Koreas on April 15, 2011. Photograph: Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Images
Lee Myung Bak and Angela Merkel
Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images
South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak and Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin.
South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak and Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin. Photographer: Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images
North Korea rejected South Korean President Lee Myung Bak’s proposal for a summit with Kim Jong Il to discuss nuclear issues as a “ridiculous attempt to disarm” the communist nation.
Lee’s invitation, made during a visit to Berlin this week, is conditional on North Korea promising to abandon its atomic weapons program.
“Outbursts raising someone’s ‘dismantlement of nukes’ as a precondition for dialogue are no more than a ridiculous attempt to disarm the DPRK and realize the ambition for invading it in collusion with the U.S.,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency said yesterday, referring to North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
North Korea has reported progress on its nuclear programs even after the United Nations toughened sanctions, in November disclosing its capabilities to enrich uranium that provide a second means of making weapons. Its talks with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the U.S. on dismantling its atomic program haven’t convened since 2008.
Relations between North Korea and South Korea deteriorated last year after North Korea shelled a disputed island, killing four South Koreans, and an international investigation blamed Kim’s military for a torpedo attack on a South Korean warship that killed 46 sailors.
Inter-Korean Talks
South Korea’s “puppet group was so preposterous as to describe the DPRK’s ‘apology’ for the above-said two cases as an option for crossing the threshold of inter-Korean dialogue,” KCNA said in a statement attributed to an unidentified spokesman for North Korea’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea.
Kim told visiting former U.S. President Jimmy Carter last month that he is ready to meet Lee any time and over any issue. The South Korean president plans to host a summit in Seoul next year as part of a global initiative championed by U.S. President Barack Obama to secure nuclear stockpiles. North Korea carried out its second nuclear test in 2009.
Inviting North Korea requires a “firm statement” by Kim’s regime “that it will renounce nuclear weapons,” Lee said on May 9 after meeting in Berlin with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. He called his comment “an official proposal.”
The South Korean leader drew a parallel with the 21-year- old reunification of East and West Germany after visiting the Brandenburg Gate, which once stood inside the Berlin Wall’s death strip that separated the Cold War enemies.
“We hope -- and I wish -- that we’ll be able to go from North Korea to the South through some gate as well,” Lee said.
German Model
North Korea rejected any idea of using the German model for reunification.
“The group is seeking to import the mode of reunification applied by a foreign country,” it said in the statement carried by KCNA. “This is as foolish an act as expecting the sky to fall. The Korean Peninsula is not Germany.”
North Korea and South Korea, facing off across the world’s most heavily armed border, remain technically at war since their 1950-53 conflict ended in a cease-fire, which was never replaced by a peace treaty. The U.S. stations troops in South Korea as a legacy of the Korean War, when China fought alongside North Korea.
To contact the reporter on this story: Brett Miller in Seoul at Bmiller30@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Brian Fowler Bfowler4@bloomberg.net
Rate this Page