N.Korea-UNC talks on Cheonan likely: report

The US-led UN Command (UNC) in Seoul may accept a North Korean proposal for military talks over the sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan, a report said Sunday.

The Seoul-based Yonhap News Agency said North Korea had proposed Friday that senior officers from the two sides meet Tuesday to discuss setting up general-level talks on the sinking of the Cheonan.

Yonhap said the offer to hold the meeting of colonels, at the border village of Panmunjom, was a counterproposal to one from the UNC in June to discuss the Cheonan investigation with the North.

"Chances are high that the North-UNC meeting will take place," Yonhap quoted a senior official at the South's defense ministry as saying. "A working-level meeting can be held on July 13 as proposed by the North or it could be scheduled for a later date than that."

The North's proposal came after the UN Security Council issued a watered-down statement Friday that didn't name the North as the attacker of a South Korean ship in March.

North Korea's UN ambassador, Sin Son-ho, hailed the unanimous statement as a "great diplomatic victory."

South Korea's ambassador to the UN, Park In-kook, told reporters that his country also "welcomes the UN presidential statement."

China's UN permanent representative, Li Baodong, said Friday that the "situation is moving in the right direction," further urging regional powers to put the sinking behind them and move to end a cycle of antagonism.

However, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the statement "underscores ... the reality that a peaceful resolution of the issues on the Korean Peninsula will only be possible if North Korea fundamentally changes its behavior."

"The UN's statement, an apparently political compromise among concerned parties, is intended to cajole North Korea to return to the negotiating table," Yin Gang, a researcher of international politics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times.

The KCNA News Agency quoted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade as saying Fri-day that Pyongyang will "make consistent efforts for the conclusion of a peace treaty of the Korean War (1950-53), and for the denuclearization process through Six-Party Talks conducted on equal footing."

Agencies–Global Times