Two Koreas in first talks in over two years "without argument"

North and South Korea opened their first official talks in two years on Sunday at a border village "without argument", the South said, building on an easing in tensions from nearly daily threats two months ago of impending nuclear war. The meeting in Pammunjon, where the armistice was signed in the 1950-53 Korean War, was taking place hours after US President Barack Obama and Chinese leader Xi Jinping agreed at a summit that the North had to abandon its nuclear programme.
The hour-long morning session appeared to pave the way for ministerial-level discussions next Wednesday. Such a meeting would be the first such encounter in more than six years. A spokesman for the South's Unification Ministry, said the two sides discussed technical issues for the ministerial meeting, including the venue and size of delegations.
"After the morning meeting, we both agreed to keep discussing," Kim Hyung-suk told reporters at the ministry in Seoul. "And the atmosphere of todayâ€(tm)s meeting, as both South and North Korea have come to the meeting table after some time...was such that the talks have gone smoothly without any argument." The meeting was to proceed through the afternoon, he said.
There was no immediate comment on the talks from the North. Before the talks got underway, officials said they would focus on normalising commercial projects, including the Kaesong Industrial Zone just inside North Korea, closed in early April, and reuniting families still separated 60 years after the war. North Korea's overture to hold discussions reversed months of bellicose rhetoric after the United Nations imposed toughened sanctions against the North in response to its third nuclear test in February. The North also reopened a Red Cross hotline with South Korea last week.
At their informal summit in the California desert, Obama and Xi found common ground on Korth Korea, whose belligerent rhetoric, nuclear tests and missile launches have frustrated Beijing, its only major diplomatic and financial ally. White House National Security adviser Thomas Donilon said the two leaders "agreed that North Korea has to denuclearise, that neither country will accept North Korea as a nuclear-armed state". The two sides, he said, would "would work together to deepen co-operation and dialogue to achieve denuclarisation". US officials came away from the meeting believing that China was ready to work more closely with the United States, but offered no specific measures to be taken.