U.S., S. Korea Drop Plan for Talks With the North

Clearly out of patience with North Korea, the United States and South Korea abandoned plans Tuesday for a high-level meeting to prepare a full-scale peace conference marking a formal end to the Korean War.

State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said the proposal for peace talks--originally made last year by President Clinton and South Korean President Kim Young Sam--remains open and can be accepted by North Korea at any time.

“The ball is in their court, and the ball will remain there,” Burns said.

The saga of the aborted meeting is a metaphor for the frequent frustration experienced by U.S. and South Korean officials in trying to deal with the isolated and unpredictable Communist government in Pyongyang.

Six weeks ago, the United States and South Korea outlined their plans for a peace conference of the four main powers--the United States, South Korea, North Korea and China--that fought the war, which began in 1950 and ended in an uneasy truce in 1953. According to U.S. officials, the North Koreans listened politely, asked a few questions and said they would have to think about it.

Last week, North Korea said it was ready to reply to the invitation. High-level delegations from Seoul, Pyongyang and Washington met most of the day last Wednesday at a New York hotel, but, to the surprise of the Americans, the North Koreans did not deliver a definitive answer.

The three delegations agreed to meet again Friday, and the North Koreans indicated to the Americans that they would deliver their answer then. But the Friday meeting never started, because the North Koreans said they were awaiting instructions from Pyongyang. The session was postponed until Saturday. But there was no meeting then either.

U.S. and South Korean officials waited in New York on Monday. But Tuesday, the South Korean delegation returned home.

“Yesterday, the word was ‘muddle.’ Today, it is ‘inconclusive,’ ” Burns said in an expression of U.S. frustration.

Nevertheless, he said, lower-ranking U.S. and North Korean officials met Tuesday in New York to discuss such bilateral issues as the search for the remains of American service personnel still listed as missing in action and U.S. efforts to persuade North Korea to refrain from selling its ballistic missile technology to Iran and other potential buyers.

The United States and North Korea are scheduled to meet for talks about missile proliferation May 12-13 in New York. Burns said the United States “fully expects” the North Koreans to show up.