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SEOUL : Officials from the two Koreas prepared to hold talks Thursday aimed at reviving a high-level dialogue suspended by the crisis over the North's weapons drive, opening the way for major aid shipments.
The meeting at the North Korean border city of Kaesong comes just two days after a landmark international deal in which Pyongyang agreed to disable key nuclear facilities in return for aid and diplomatic concessions.
Any agreement to resume ministerial dialogue -- suspended for seven months amid tensions over the North's weapons programmes -- is expected to pave the way for shipments of rice and fertiliser worth millions of dollars from Seoul to its impoverished communist neighbour.
Seoul's delegation, led by Lee Kwan-Se, an assistant unification minister, left for Kaesong early Thursday for the one-day working-level talks, Yonhap news agency reported.
"We hope to make substantive progress not only in a solution to the North's nuclear weapons programme, but also in the government's policy of peace and prosperity by resuming the cabinet-level talks," Unification Minister Lee Jae-Joung told the team.
The ministerial talks, the highest-level regular dialogue channel, were suspended last July after North Korea's missile tests sparked international alarm.
Seoul also halted a shipment of 100,000 tonnes of fertiliser and 500,000 tonnes of rice. It maintained the suspension of regular aid shipments after Pyongyang in October tested a nuclear weapon for the first time.
Presidential security adviser Yun Byung-Se has said the resumption of food and fertiliser aid would be on the agenda when ministerial talks reopen.
"If inter-Korean relations are restored, we can discuss issues that are on hold now," unification minister Lee, in charge of relations with the North, told reporters.
Yonhap said the North's delegation would be led by Maeng Kyong-Il, deputy chief of the secretariat at the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland.
Successful negotiations would enable the ministerial talks, the 20th since the first-ever Korean summit in 2000, to be held in Pyongyang as early as late this month, according to officials.
The last meeting took place in South Korea's port city of Busan.
The two nations usually take turns hosting the talks.
South Korea has hailed the nuclear deal, reached Tuesday in Beijing after six-party talks, as a turning point it said could eventually bring a permanent peace treaty on the divided peninsula, formally closing the 1950-1953 Korean War.
The North agreed to "disable" its nuclear facilities over an unspecified period in return for up to one million tonnes of heavy fuel oil.
As an "initial action" Pyongyang will shut down its nuclear facilities at Yongbyon within 60 days and invite UN atomic inspectors back in. The shutdown will be rewarded with the first 50,000 tonnes of oil.
Also within 60 days, the United States will begin the process of removing the North from its list of terrorist states. Washington and Pyongyang will also begin direct talks on establishing diplomatic ties.
However, conservative critics have questioned what they see as the Seoul government's rush to resume ties. The Dong-A Ilbo newspaper noted that it had requested the Kaesong meeting a day before the Beijing agreement was reached.
"While the government considers the outcome of this round of six-party talks as a success, and is hurrying to revive more dialogue with the North, other nations of the six-party talks, such as the US and Japan, remain doubtful," it said. - AFP /dt
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