N Korea ‘unconditional’ talks bid

Both sides have been conducting military drills amid the rising tensions

North Korea wants “unconditional” talks with the South to put an end to months of extreme tension, the North’s official news agency reports.

In a rare conciliatory gesture, KCNA said Pyongyang was ready to meet “anyone, any time, anywhere”, and proposed a mutual end to provocation.

The late-night statement came as top US envoy Stephen Bosworth began a new round of diplomacy in the region.

Tensions have been high since the North shelled a Southern island in November.

KCNA said North Korea was proposing “having wide-ranging dialogue and negotiations” with Seoul, saying such co-operation was “the only way out from this serious situation”.

“In order to mend the North-South relations, now at the lowest ebb, we will conduct positive dialogue and negotiations with the political parties and organisations of South Korea including its authorities,” the statement said.

It proposed that both sides also put an end to “slanders and calumnies” of each other, and refrain from “any act of provoking each other in order to create an atmosphere of improving the inter-Korean relations”.

The statement came as Mr Bosworth arrived in China, North Korea’s ally, for further talks aimed at calming the heated atmosphere on the peninsula and tackling the North’s nuclear programme.

On Wednesday, he held talks in Seoul with South Korea’s foreign minister and chief nuclear negotiator.

The men agreed that the six nation talks could only restart once North Korea had demonstrated a commitment to denuclearisation and to improving relations with the South, Yonhap reported.

Mr Bosworth, who is visiting several north-east Asian capitals, said earlier that “serious negotiations must be at the heart of any strategy for dealing with North Korea and we look forward to being able to launch those at a reasonably early time”.

Earlier this week, South Korea’s President Lee Myung-Bak offered closer economic ties with the North if it changed its course.

The US and Chinese presidents are due to meet in Washington later this month – with the issue of North Korea likely to be high on the agenda.

North Korea says the 23 November shelling of Yeonpyeong island, which killed four people, was in response to South Korean military exercises in the area – close to the disputed inter-Korean western maritime border.

The attacks came months after international investigators blamed Pyongyang for an attack on a South Korean warship which killed 46 sailors.

In the wake of the shelling of Yeonpyeong island, the US and South Korea held large-scale military exercises in the area.

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