Pyongyang offers talks for inter-Korean summit

By Lee Tae-hoon

A senior North Korean official has expressed Pyongyang’s willingness to hold an inter-Korean summit to “The Elders,” a group of former state leaders and renowned global figures, a U.S.-based Korean scholar familiar with the group said Sunday.

The scholar said the official sought help from the group in holding a high-level meeting with South Korea early next year to negotiate a possible summit between its leader Kim Jong-il and President Lee Myung-bak.

"A North Korean official handling inter-Korean projects met key figures of The Elders in August in New York and asked them to convey the North's willingness to hold a high-level meeting in January to the South," Yonhap News Agency quoted the scholar as saying.

The scholar, asking for anonymity, said a delegation is scheduled to visit Seoul this week to deliver the proposal and then travel to Pyongyang to fine-tune the meeting.

“The North Korean official suggested that details of the high-level meeting should be fixed no later than the end of the year,” he said, adding that he asked a foreign and security policy official at Cheong Wa Dae to attend the preliminary talks.

According to a source, The Elders are considering joining the high-level inter-Korean talks as a third party, but has decided to exclude former U.S. President Jimmy Carter from the trilateral meeting.

The source said they will keep Carter away from participating in upcoming inter-Korean talks as the Lee administration has been at odds with the former U.S. President’s North Korean activities and advocacy of removing sanctions against the communist regime.

He said the global diplomatic team will likely choose former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland as the head of its delegation and propose the meeting take place in January in Sweden, which has a policy of neutrality.

Returning from a three-day trip to the North in April, Carter said North Korean leader Kim was ready for a summit with President Lee at any time. The former U.S. President said he failed to meet Kim, but the latter expressed his intent to meet Lee at any time on any subject in a written message read to him by a North Korean official just before he left the communist regime.

President Lee, whose five-year term ends in early 2013, has expressed willingness to hold an inter-Korean summit as well, but insisted that Pyongyang must first take responsibility for past attacks and declare its intent to abandon its nuclear programs.

The North carried out two surprise attacks against the South near the maritime border in the West Sea, killing 50 people including two civilians

Lee, however, has softened his hard-line posture against Pyongyang in recent months in an apparent move to mend souring ties by replacing the unification minister and resuming aid to the Stalinist regime.

The two Koreas held summit meetings in 2000 and 2007 under Lee’s two liberal predecessors and agreed on a series of reconciliation and joint economic projects.

The inter-Korean relationship worsened after President Lee took office in February 2008 and took a tougher stance on the North, linking major aid and economic cooperation with the dismantlement of Pyongyang’s nuclear programs.

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