ID :
187540
Thu, 06/09/2011 - 15:53
Auther :
Shortlink :
https://oananews.org//node/187540
The shortlink copeid
N. Korea threatens to disclose voice recordings of secret meeting with S. Korea
(ATTN: UPDATES with South Korean reaction; minor edits)
SEOUL, June 9 (Yonhap) -- North Korea threatened on Thursday to disclose voice recordings of a secret meeting it had with South Korea last month, during which Seoul allegedly proposed holding a series of inter-Korean summits.
In a surprise move earlier this month, North Korea reported that the two Koreas held a secret meeting in Beijing where Seoul negotiators had "begged" for three inter-Korean summits and offered an envelope of cash as an inducement.
The two Koreas acknowledged that they had held the secret talks but gave different accounts of what happened, prompting one side to accuse the other side of distorting facts.
South Korea had denied that the purpose was to set up summit meetings, rebuffing Pyongyang's claims that it begged for them and offered an unspecified amount of cash as a reward for coming out for the secret contact.
???An envelope of cash did not exist,??? a South Korean official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. He challenged North Korea to make poublic voice recordings if it has them.
The official renewed Seoul???s stance that the secret meeting was to win North Korea???s apology for its two deadly attacks on the South last year that killed a total of 50 people, most of them soldiers.
Still, he suggested that the summit might have been mentioned as a topic during the secret talks, saying the North???s apology could have paved the way for higher-level meetings.
Seoul has made Pyongyang's apology for the two attacks a key condition for improving inter-Korean relations and resuming the stalled six-party talks on ending the communist regime's nuclear weapons programs.
An official from the North's powerful National Defense Commission, who was involved in the secret meeting, dismissed Seoul's account of the negotiations as a "sheer lie," according to the North's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
Quoting the North Korean official, the KCNA reported that South Korean negotiators told their North Korean counterparts that the secret meeting was arranged to try to set up inter-Korean summit talks under the direct instruction of South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.
The North Korean official also told the KCNA that Southern officials said the summit must be held and proposed that the two sides hold another secret meeting in Malaysia and Cabinet-level talks to lay the groundwork for the summits -- the first at the border village of Panmunjom in June, second in Pyongyang in August and third in Seoul in March next year on the sidelines of an international security summit.
"Should they continue to decline to reveal the truth and deceive their fellow countrymen and hatch plots, the (North) will have no other choice but to make public the tape recording, the whole course of the contact before the world," the North Korean official said, according to the KCNA.
The North???s threat appears to have been driven by its ???internal problems,??? the South Korean official told reporters, adding it also could be aimed at fomenting friction in South Korea. He did not elaborate.
The leaders of the two Koreas have so far met twice, first in 2000 and again in 2007. Those meetings were held when South Korea was led by two liberal presidents, Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun.
Inter-Korean relations have frayed badly since conservative President Lee took office in early 2008 with a policy to link aid to progress in ending the North's nuclear ambitions.