Post n-deal, Koreas seek to end war

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.

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.

Roh left Pyongyang, where thousands lined the streets waving plastic flowers and cheering “hurray” as his motorcade headed to the South. Roh went to the summit declaring it would make the peninsula safer and help the North’s shattered economy, but many analysts were doubtful he would be able to win concessions from the reclusive Kim.

And even Roh said he found it difficult to break down a wall of mistrust from Kim whom analysts say fears that opening up his secretive state too much to foreign influence could undermine the personality cult around his rule and threaten his own position.

Wednesday’s agreement to disable the Yongbyon complex came a year after North Korea tested a nuclear device, earning it international sanctions that analysts say have hit hard. The deal essentially puts North Korea back to where it was over a decade ago — as Kim Jong-il was taking over from his father as the North’s autocratic ruler — when it agreed to freeze its nuclear programme in exchange for aid.

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