North Korea on Sunday proposed new official talks with the rival South Korean government to end a six-month old freeze on contacts, officials said.
The surprise offer was contained in a message made by a North Korean state committee through Pyongyang radio, the South's unification ministry said. The Seoul government welcomed the offer but the opposition dismissed it as an attempt to manipulate a key parliamentary vote on Monday.
After a landmark summit between leaders of the North and South last year, the thaw froze when US President George W. Bush came to office in January signaling a harder line with the communist state.
There have been no official contacts since March between the governments of the North and South, which have never formally ended the 1950-53 Korean War.
The South Korean government said the proposal was welcome but cautioned it wanted to see a formal North Korean offer.
"We hope the offer will lead to the resumption of the deadlocked dialogue. But we have to wait for a formal North Korean proposal," a unification ministry official said.
The message was directed at South Korea's Unification Minister Lim Won-Dong, who faces a no-confidence motion in the South Korean national assembly on Monday.
Rim Dong-ok, a vice-chairman of the North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland, offered the new negotiations.
He said: "We propose an early resumption of talks with the South in accordance with the spirit of the North-South declaration, reflecting the wishes of the whole Korean people."
He added: "We expect a positive response toward our constructive proposal to come from the South."
Diplomats were perplexed by the North Korean move after signs in recent months of a hardening stance in Pyongyang toward the United States and even certain parts of the government of the South's President Kim Dae-Jung.
They emphasized how offers of negotiations would normally be made through the border truce village of Panmunjom in the de-militarized zone splitting the Korean peninsula.
North Korea's announcement came on the eve of a three-day visit to Pyongyang by China's President Jiang Zemin. Jiang is expected to press North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il to carry out a promised visit to Seoul.
A Pyongyang summit between President Kim and the North's supreme leader in June last year produced a joint promise to move toward a formal peace on the Korean peninsula.
The summit led to family reunions and agreements to work on other reconciliation initiatives. But the North has never seriously started work on a proposed cross-border railway and the last reunions were in March with no more planned.
President Kim's "Sunshine Policy" of engagement with the North, for which he won the Nobel Peace prize last year, faces growing opposition in the South. The president has made several fruitless appeals for Kim Jong-Il to name the date for a second summit.
His unification minister faces a vote of no-confidence in the national assembly on Monday for allowing a visit to Pyongyang by a group of South Korean activists that was seen as a propaganda victory for the communist North.
The main opposition Grand National Party issued a statement saying it suspected the North's offer "might be an attempt to save the unification minister."
The opposition is increasingly confident it will win the vote, which although non-binding would put massive pressure on President Kim to sack his trusted confidant.
Lim was one of the architects of the Sunshine Policy and a key organizer of last year's Pyongyang summit -- SEOUL (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
