Leaders of the two Koreas agreed on Thursday to try to bring peace to the Cold War’s last frontier, just a day after the North signed up to an international deal to disable its nuclear facilities.

But some analysts said the pledges at only the second summit between North and South Korea were limited, with the reclusive North clearly reluctant to break much new ground.

“North and South Korea shared the view they must end the current armistice and build a permanent peace regime,” President Roh Moo-hyun and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il said in a joint statement at the end of their three-day meeting in Pyongyang.

They will push for talks next month with China and the United States to formally end the 1950-53 Korean War, which technically is still going on because a peace treaty has yet to be signed. If Beijing and Washington did agree, it would be mark an end at last to the Cold War in the region but the United States has already made clear that one condition would be for Pyongyang to give up all nuclear weapons — something the North shows no sign of being in a hurry to do.

The summit ended just a day after North Korea agreed to disable the three main nuclear facilities at its Yongbyon site — and a source of material for atomic weapons — and provide a full declaration of all its nuclear programmes by the end of the year.

US president George W Bush was quick to praise the nuclear deal with North Korea. He even held up North Korea as a possible model for resolving the nuclear standoff with Iran.

... contd.