SEOUL: North and South Korea agreed yesterday to proceed with reunions of families separated by the Korean War despite an earlier North Korean demand that they could only go ahead if the South postponed military exercises with the United States.
The agreement clearly represented a concession by the North, which has made unpredictable diplomatic moves over the past month. The North had proposed the reunions, but then threatened to withdraw consent over a sortie by a US B52 bomber.
It had also demanded that the South call off annual defence drills later this month with the United States on grounds that they overlapped with the proposed reunions. The South refused, saying the reunions and the military exercises should be treated separately.
In the end, there was no link between the issues in a three-point agreement reached after two sessions of talks this week, the first high-level meetings between the sides in seven years.
“We tried to drive home the point that the family reunion event will be the first step in building trust so we should press ahead with it,” South Korea’s chief delegate, Kim Kyou-hyun, told a news briefing.
“The North accepted this point in the end and we came to the agreement,” he said. Kim is South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s deputy national security adviser.
Russia not for Lanka probe
COLOMBO: Russia yesterday rejected calls by Western nations for an international probe into alleged war crimes in the final phase of the 26-year Sri Lankan civil war that the government won in 2009.
Visiting Colombo amid concern about the country’s human rights record in the United States and Britain, a senior Russian diplomat said attempts to impose an international inquiry into wartime atrocities would be counterproductive.
The United States and Britain have said they might ask the United Nations Human Rights Council in March to call for an inquiry. The UN has twice urged Sri Lanka to punish military personnel responsible for atrocities in the civil war.
A UN panel has said around 40,000 mainly Tamil civilians died in the final few months of the war. Both sides committed atrocities but army shelling killed most victims, it concluded.
“Nothing good will come out from an international investigation,” Anatoly Viktorov, the foreign ministry’s director for humanitarian corporation and human rights, told reporters in Colombo at the end of a two-day visit.
“In many occasions, it is extremely difficult to establish who is responsible for what in internal armed conflicts,” he said.
REUTERS
