Seoul to Promote Arms Talks

South Korean officials said Saturday that they would use a meeting this week with North Korea to press the regime in Pyongyang to return to stalled six-party nuclear disarmament talks.

Rhee Bong Jo, deputy unification minister, told reporters that Seoul had agreed to Pyongyang’s request for talks Monday and Tuesday in the North Korean city of Kaesong.

Among the topics to be discussed is the North’s request for 500,000 tons of fertilizer aid. Rhee said the South also would “deliver our stand on North Korea’s nuclear program as well as concerns of the international community.”

Rhee said the bilateral talks “could foster a positive mood for the nuclear talks,” which North Korea has refused to attend for nearly a year. Pyongyang has asked for direct talks with Washington and accuses the Bush administration of plotting a “regime change” in North Korea.

On Saturday, North Korea dismissed comments made last week by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledging the North’s sovereignty, saying the gesture was an attempt to conceal a plan to topple its communist government.

A North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said Rice’s “loudmouthed recognition of the sovereign state and the like were nothing but a ruse to conceal the U.S. attempt at bringing down [North Korea’s] regime.”

Rice said in a television interview last week that “the United States, of course, recognizes that North Korea is sovereign.” Her remark was widely seen as a gesture to coax the North to return to the six-party talks.

The Pyongyang government declared in February that it had nuclear weapons and would indefinitely boycott the talks until the U.S. ended its “hostile” policy.