Koreas Sign Wide-Ranging Accords : Diplomacy: The pacts are possible only because the two sides agree to defer tougher issues. A nuclear inspections deadlock could sink the agreements.

North and South Korea signed three accords Thursday that could lead to broad cooperation in political, military and economic spheres, but a continued deadlock over nuclear inspections threatened to keep them from being carried out.

The countries’ two prime ministers, meeting in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, signed detailed pacts to start the process of implementing December’s landmark agreement that would begin to reconcile their populations, divided since World War II. If implemented, the accords would at last defuse the peninsula’s potential military time bomb and open the border for unprecedented exchanges of people, goods and information.

“This is milestone progress in realizing the unification of the motherland,” said North Korean Prime Minister Yon Hyong Mok, after signing the pacts in the People’s Cultural Palace in downtown Pyongyang.

South Korean Prime Minister Chung Wok Shik declared that “nothing now can stop this work” toward national reunification.

However, the two sides managed to sign the pacts only because they agreed to defer resolution of the toughest issues: mutual nuclear inspections, for instance, and the reunion of separated relatives.

And in a briefing in Seoul, Koo Bon Taek, head of the Unification Policy Bureau, told reporters that “implementation of all these agreements still depends on how the nuclear issue is resolved.”

On that score, neither side appeared to budge Thursday. Although Pyongyang bowed to international pressure and opened its civilian nuclear sites to the International Atomic Energy Agency this year, Seoul insists that the north also allow “challenge inspections” on short notice and access to military facilities.

Pyongyang refuses--and reiterated its position in this eighth round of the regular series of talks begun in 1990. In his keynote address Wednesday, Prime Minister Yon decried Seoul’s “preposterous demands,” adding, “this only makes the inspections impossible.”

Nor was there headway over the emotional matter of family exchanges. Although the two sides had earlier agreed to allow the reunion of a selected number of families, the program was abruptly dropped after Pyongyang demanded that Seoul repatriate Lee In Mo, a North Korean war correspondent arrested on charges of guerrilla activity more than 40 years ago.

Pyongyang also demands the release of two South Koreans imprisoned for unauthorized visits to the north; abandonment of the south’s policy of linking economic cooperation with the nuclear issue and a halt to all joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises.

The two Koreas also failed to agree on reducing forces in the demilitarized zone, banning blockades and reconnaissance operations against each other or prohibiting “foreign interference in domestic affairs” of either side. That last clause would, for instance, prevent Seoul from supporting U.S. pressure against Pyongyang over the nuclear issue.

However, should the accords signed Thursday actually be implemented, they could allow unprecedented contact between the two sides--or what the Han Kyoreh newspaper described as “drastic progress in north-south relations.”

For instance, the pacts guarantee the free exchange of information about the respective political systems, allowing access to each other’s media. Other provisions would end slander campaigns and bar the use of arms against each other. A military hot line will be set up between the two capitals.

Under the economic pact, the two sides would reconnect land links severed for four decades; establish air and sea connections; begin uncensored mail service, and cancel inter-Korean trade tariffs.

The two sides agreed to sign the accords despite the significant number of unresolved issues because both governments needed a public-relations boost, analysts here said.

The prime ministers will meet again in Seoul from Dec. 21 to Dec. 24.