SEOUL: North Korea has delayed military talks scheduled for Tuesday with the US-led United Nations Command about the deadly sinking of a South Korean warship, the Command said.
The meeting would have been the first of its kind since the warship went down in March near the disputed inter-Korean sea border, an incident that sharply raised regional tensions.
South Korea, the United States and other nations accuse the North of torpedoing the corvette with the loss of 46 lives. Pyongyang vehemently denies the charge and threatens war in response to any punishment.
The announcement of the delay came less than an hour before the talks were to begin at the border village of Panmunjom.
The Command, which oversees the armistice that ended the 1950-53 war, said in a statement the North`s army representatives requested a delay "for administrative reasons".
A new time for the talks was not immediately proposed. The planned colonel-level meeting was due to discuss arrangements for future talks at general-level.
The North previously refused to hold discussions with the US military over the sinking, calling for talks only with South Korea, but it shifted its stance on Friday.
Hours after that development, the UN Security Council issued a statement which condemned the attack but did not apportion blame -- a result hailed by the North as a "great diplomatic victory".
Following the UN statement, which was watered down under pressure from Pyongyang`s ally China, the North reiterated its conditional willingness to return to stalled international nuclear disarmament negotiations.
But it threatened "strong physical retaliation" if South Korea and the United States persist in "demonstration of forces and sanctions".
The two allies plan a naval exercise as a show of strength following the attack on the 1,200-tonne corvette.
But they are still deciding where to hold the drill, originally planned for the Yellow Sea, following strong protests from China.
Professor Kim Yong-Hyun of Seoul`s Dongguk University said he believes the North postponed Tuesday`s talks because details of the exercise are not known.
"The military talks will take place sooner or later as China is heaping pressure on the North to have dialogue," Kim told AFP. "The talks may produce little result, but the fact that such a meeting has taken place for the first time since the sinking will help ease tension."
The United States voiced scepticism Monday about the North`s conditional willingness to resume nuclear dialogue.
"If North Korea wants to engage seriously in the six-party process, there are very specific actions that North Korea has to take first before we would consider a resumption of the six-party process," said State Department spokesman Philip Crowley.
Crowley urged North Korea to cease "provocative behaviour" as seen in the sinking of the warship.
"If they`re not prepared to show through affirmative actions a willingness to fulfil existing commitments under the six-party process -- that it`s prepared to give up its nuclear programme -- then you have to ask the fundamental question: What are we going to talk about?" Crowley said.
The six-nation talks -- which involve China, Japan, the two Koreas, Russia and the United States -- agreed in 2005 and 2007 to offer badly needed aid and security guarantees for Pyongyang in return for nuclear disarmament.
The North stormed out of the talks in April last year after being censured by the UN for a long-range missile launch. It staged a second nuclear weapons test a month later.
The North has previously expressed a willingness in principle to return. But first it wants the US to agree to hold talks on a peace treaty formally ending the 1950-53 war and an end to sanctions.
BDST: 0919 HRS, July 13, 2010
