By Jung Sung-ki
Staff reporter
Military officers from the United Nations Command (UNC) and North Korea will meet again Tuesday to discuss the holding of a general-level meeting over the sinking of a South Korean warship in March in the West Sea, the UNC said Monday.
The two sides held a colonel-level meeting last Thursday at the truce village of Panmunjeom but failed to produce results after 90 minutes of discussion.
A Seoul-led multinational investigation team concluded in May that a North Korean submarine had torpedoed the warship Cheonan, killing 46 of the sailors onboard. Pyongyang denies the allegation.
During Thursday’s meeting, the North demanded its own inspectors be allowed to visit Seoul to verify the findings presented by the multinational team consisting of experts from the United States, Australia, Britain and Sweden.
But the U.S.-led UNC dismissed the demand, saying the issue should be dealt with within the framework of the Korean Armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War.
Tuesday’s UNC-North Korea talks precedes the 2+2 meeting of foreign and defense ministers from South Korea and the United States in Seoul. The ship sinking is to be a priority topic during the alliance talks.
The U.N. Security Council condemned the attack earlier this month, but stopped short of explicitly blaming the North.
North Korea and the UNC launched the general-level talks in 1998 as a channel to ease tensions. If held, it will be the 17th since its inception.
About 28,500 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea, a legacy of the Korean War.