Korean Talks End With No Agreement

Talks aimed at laying the foundations for a permanent peace on the Korean peninsula ended Saturday with no agreement on future negotiations, the Chinese mediator of the weeklong meetings said.

Saturday's discussions were a final attempt by representatives from China, the United States, and the two Koreas to salvage several days of meetings and keep hopes of more substantive talks alive.

But, after some success early in the week, negotiators fell short Saturday.

"We have clarified some of the important differences. We were not, however, able to narrow the differences sufficiently to move forward in our work at this time," said Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Chen Jian.

South Korea's chief negotiator put the meetings in a positive light, saying "modest progress" had been made and stressing that any talks were better than no talks. But the U.S. delegation's response was decidedly gloomier.

The ultimate goal is a peace treaty to replace the armistice that stopped fighting in Korea in 1953. But in the nearer term, the aim is to get North and South Korea to begin talking to each other - a process that ended with the 1994 death of North Korean President Kim Il Sung.

The talks had been scheduled to wrap up Friday, but Chen asked for another day to give at least one delegation more time to contact its government.

Claiming to "need flexibility on all sides," Chen declined to single out any delegation, but South Korean spokesman Oh Il Son said North Korea had requested the delay to ask for guidance from Pyongyang.

The extra time apparently was insufficient. The U.S. delegation blamed North Korea for the breakdown.

"We proposed to negotiate steps to reduce tensions and build confidence on the Korean peninsula," said U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Stanley Roth. "Unfortunately, the North Korean delegation was not prepared to do so."

All week, U.S. officials have said that consensus on a framework for future talks was being held up by North Korea's insistence that the agenda for include the U.S. withdrawal of its 37,000 troops in South Korea.

South Korea and the United States maintain that step would be premature and that as a first step the talks should agree on less contentious confidence-building measures.

Putting a more hopeful spin on Saturday's developments, the South Korean delegation chief, Song Young-shik, said all sides had concurred that working groups to study the various points of debate were critical.

"The fact that we agreed in principle on the necessity of forming a subcommittee, and the fact we had a very frank and candid exchange of views on various issues of mutual concern, can be described as modest progress," he told reporters.

Though the U.S. and South Korean teams expressed support for the concept of four-party talks, it was unclear when the sides would resume their discussions.

"I blieve the four-party process so far, despite a lack of tangible progress, has contributed to defusing the tension in the Korean peninsula," Song said.

Written by Geir Moulson©1998 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed