ATHENS, Ga. (Yonhap) -- A senior North Korean official, who is on a rare trip to the United States, called Thursday for South Korea to roll back a set of punitive measures against Pyongyang imposed after the deadly sinking of a warship last year.
Ri Jong-hyuk, a ranking member of the all-powerful Workers' Party of the communist nation, also accused the Lee Myung-bak administration of impeding the implementation of inter-Korean summit deals for cooperation and reconciliation in 2000 and 2007.
"(The Lee government) should acknowledge agreements between North and South including the June 15 and Oct. 4 summit deals and it should not put a brake on efforts to implement them," Ri told reporters after a four-day academic forum hosted by the University of Georgia.
Ri, who handles Pyongyang's relations with Seoul and other nations without diplomatic ties, led the North's delegation to the so-called Track II meetings with parliamentary members and scholars from the U.S. and South Korea.
Ri claimed that inter-Korean tensions are basically attributable to the South Korean "conservative administration's hostile policy on the North."
The Lee government should first "remove obstacles standing in the way for cooperation and exchange between North and South, including the May 24 measures," he said.
He was referring to the South's decision to scale back inter-Korean economic exchanges in response to the sinking of its corvette, the Cheonan, near the western border, killing 46 sailors. Based on a multinational probe, Korea said it was the work of a North Korean submarine. The North has denied the charges.
Ri also expressed displeasure with South Korean media, saying they are partly to blame for the frosty inter-Korean ties.
"I want (the South's media) to produce objective and fair articles in a direction to help cooperation and reconciliation between North and South," he said.
On a joint statement issued after the forum, meanwhile, he said the document, albeit legally not binding, would be "very meaningful" in trying to build mutual trust between the two Koreas.
The six-point statement recommends the U.S. and the two Koreas replace an armistice on the peninsula with a sustainable peace regime, cooperate on food aid, and reunite separated families.
It did not directly mention the Cheonan incident, saying only that the parties should take necessary steps to prevent the recurrence of such "unfortunate" incidents in the Yellow Sea. (Yonhap)