Pyongyang, Washington agree to resume 4-party Korean peace talks: official

SEOUL, Dec. 13 (Yonhap) -- The United States and North Korea generally agreed on
resuming suspended four-way talks aimed at replacing a 47-year-old armistice on
the Korean War with a peace treaty during a U.S. special envoy's recent trip to
Pyongyang, Seoul officials said Sunday.

The matter of officially ending the war between the two Koreas by replacing the
ceasefire with a peace treaty has been a task looming over the peninsula since
the end of the Korean War in 1953.
"I believe the two sides agreed on resuming the four-party peace talks once an
official agreement has been made on reviving the denuclearization talks," a South
Korean government official said, requesting not to be named due to the
sensitivity of the issue.
"It was North Korea that first requested the matter be discussed within the
four-party framework," the official added.
Washington's special envoy Stephen Bosworth met North Korea's Foreign Minister
Kang Suk-joo in Pyongyang during his Dec. 8-10 trip to the communist state,
seeking North Korea's agreement in reviving the stalled multilateral dialogue
aimed at dismantling North Korea's nuclear weapons programs.
During their meeting, the two high-ranking officials also apparently came to a
general agreement on discussing the peace treaty issue within the four-nation
framework.
The first round of the four-way talks, including the two Koreas, the United
States and China, was held in 1997 and has been suspended since 1999, with North
Korea rebuffing South Korea's role in the talks.
The United States has claimed it will not take part in any peace discussions
without the South.
In 2000, then U.S. President Bill Clinton and Pyongyang's special envoy Cho
Myung-rok met in Washington and agreed to "positively consider" resuming the
four-party talks as one way of officially ending the Korean War.
hayney@yna.co.kr
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