North Korea has offered to hold working-level military talks with the United States next week to set up a higher-level meeting over the sinking of the Cheonan, Pyongyang’s state media said on Friday.
The North, via its Korean Central News Agency, said it sent a proposal to the U.S. military Friday requesting that colonel-level officers from the two sides meet July 13 to discuss setting up general-grade talks on the March sinking of the South Korean warship.
The North said it decided to hold talks with the U.S. military over the issue because South Korea had turned down its dialogue offer. The North said it “still regards the opening of the North-South military talks as the best way for settling the issue,”according to the news agency.
The U.S. military had offered to hold military talks with the North in June to explain the outcome of a multinational investigation that found the communist regime responsible for the attack that killed 46 sailors.
Friday’s offer from the North was a counteroffer to the June proposal, the KCNA said.
North Korea claims it was not involved in the sinking of the Cheonan.
After Seoul, along with a team of multinational investigators, fingered Pyongyang as the culprit, the reclusive regime had called for the South to accept a team of North Korean inspectors to verify the results of the probe.
South Korea has rejected the North’s demand, saying Pyongyang should first come clean on the disaster, issue an apology and punish those responsible.
The North’s dialogue proposal came ahead of the U.N. Security Council adopting of a presidential statement denouncing the attack on the Cheonan.
The statement, however, did not explicitly name the North as the culprit.
댓글 없음:
댓글 쓰기