Reconciliation talks between North and South Korea ended Friday with no agreements reached, following a row over Seoul's decision to link promised rice aid to Pyongyang's denuclearisation. After four days of high-level talks, the two sides issued a four-sentence statement that set no date for the next ministerial meeting.
The South's Unification Ministry had said earlier in the day that no joint statement would be issued and described the mood as "not good." The two sides said only that they "have sufficiently presented their positions and held sincere discussions on fundamental and actual matters linked to progress in inter-Korean relations."
They agreed "to continue to further examine ways to boost reconciliation and cooperation between the two Koreas and peace on the Korean peninsula." The South has refused to make its first shipment of much-needed rice aid until the North begins honouring a six-nation nuclear disarmament deal reached in February.
The communist state says that the two issues are unrelated and that "foreign powers" - a reference to the United States - are interfering with the rice deal.
"Rice was the most difficult issue," the South's chief delegate, Unification Minister Lee Jae-Joung, told reporters, adding there were "frank discussions" on the topic.
Delegation spokesman Ko Gyoung-Bin said the North Koreans were told it would be impossible to win public support for the rice deal if implementation of the nuclear agreement is delayed further. Hankook newspaper said the North Koreans on Thursday had threatened to halt a reunion programme for separated families unless the South delivered its aid. "The North Korea side made no remarks on any specific event," Ko said.
The ministerial talks are the highest-level regular contacts between two nations still technically at war following their 1950-53 conflict. But efforts to ease tensions and promote joint economic projects have fallen foul of the continuing nuclear impasse.
At this week's talks, South Korea reiterated appeals to the North to shut down its Yongbyon reactor, the first step in the February deal. It produces the raw material for bomb-making plutonium. The North refuses to budge until it receives 25 million dollars which had been frozen since 2005 in Macau's Banco Delta Asia (BDA) under US-inspired sanctions.
Washington said the accounts were unfrozen in March but the North has had problems finding a foreign bank to handle the transfer of cash deemed to be tainted. Peter Beck, Northeast Asia director of the International Crisis Group, told AFP the US Treasury is understood to be unwilling to issue a legal waiver to any bank which makes the transfer.
Pyongyang has rejected a suggestion by chief US nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill that it start shutting down Yongbyon before the long-running banking dispute is settled.