North Korea postpones meeting to set summit agenda

A South Korean riot policemen pin down a protester on the ground and seize a North Korean flag during a rally against the planned two Koreas summit on Korea's Liberation Day, Wednesday, Aug. 15, 2007. South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun on Wednesday vowed that his upcoming summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il will facilitate the six-nation talks on ending Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)


North Korea postpones meeting to set summit agenda
Sun Aug 12, 2007 5:02AM EDT

SEOUL (Reuters) - Preparations for the second ever summit meeting between the leaders of North and South Korea suffered a setback on Sunday when North Korea said it would not attend the first formal planning session proposed for Monday.
Last week the two announced that South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun will visit North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang on August 28-30, leaving officials little time to prepare for their first summit since June 2000.
"North Korea said that tomorrow it will inform us of a new date," a South Korean Unification Ministry official said, adding the ministry was unsure why the North did not want to meet the South's call to hold the meeting on Monday.
The governments of the two Koreas, still technically at war, hailed the summit as a chance to bring peace to the last frontier of the Cold War, which is watched over by close to two million troops and batteries of missiles.
But the summit has been greeted with a heavy dose of skepticism in the South with the unpopular Roh, who has six months left in office, accused of quickly arranging the meeting for domestic politicking.
Setting the agenda for the summit looks to be a formidable task and could include issues such as having North Korea live up to a six-country agreement to scrap its nuclear weapons. The two sides could also discuss a peace regime for the peninsula and whether to redraw a border set after the 1950-1953 Korean War.
© Reuters 2006.