Top officials from the Communist Party and the government set the agenda for "energetically pushing forward the movement for national reunification this year" at a meeting in Pyongyang yesterday, North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency said.
Preparatory meetings were proposed for Pyongyang, Seoul, Mount Kumgang, a South Korea-operated tourist resort in North Korea, and other locations between officials from North and South Korea "to pave a wide avenue for independent reunification through national cooperation," KCNA said.
"All the Koreans in the north and the south should turn out in a sacred struggle to foil the US moves to provoke nuclear war by the concerted efforts of the nation," KCNA said.
South Korea's Unification Ministry, which handles relations with North Korea, said the meeting of top Pyongyang party and government officials was an annual event usually held in February or March.
"North Korea has talked up reunification for quite a while. It is nothing new. We tend to think they are emphasising national cooperation because of the international situation," said a ministry official.
The Korean peninsula was split into communist north and capitalist south after World War II, a division cemented when Chinese-backed North Korea forces and South Korea and its US allies clashed in the 1950-53 Korean War.
The 15-month nuclear crisis has clouded reconciliation efforts promoted by former South Korean president Kim Dae-Jung.
He travelled to Pyongyang in June 2000 for a historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il, signing a joint declaration calling for stepped-up economic and humanitarian exchanges to promote reunification.
The effort has produced a series of agreements on relinking roads and railways severed since the Korean War and building a South Korea-funded industrial zone in Kaesong, just north of the heavily fortified inter-Korean border.
Kim's successor, Roh Moo-Hyun, elected two months after US officials said North Korea had admitted to running a clandestine uranium enrichment programme, triggering the nuclear crisis, is also an ardent advocate of reconciliation.
"But the policy is no longer the same," said a Foreign Ministry official.
"South Korea's is not willing to engage in new cooperation projects until the nuclear crisis is resolved".
The North Korean appeal for unity with the South is seen here as Pyongyang's latest move in its longstanding strategy of driving a wedge between Seoul and Washington.
"They would like South Korea to cooperate in an anti-US stand," said the Unification Ministry official.
The US hardline on North Korea and the presence of 37 000 US troops in South Korea has stirred anti-US sentiment in South Korea, a phenomenon Pyongyang is keen to exploit.
"All Koreans should turn out in an anti-US patriotic struggle to achieve national cooperation and protect the well-being and peace of the nation from the US moves to estrange Koreans from each other," KCNA said. – Sapa-AFP.
EMAIL THIS ARTICLE SAVE THIS ARTICLE FEEDBACK
To subscribe email subscriptions@creamermedia.co.za or click here
To advertise email advertising@creamermedia.co.za or click here
