SEOUL April 30 Kyodo (EDS: UPDATI...

SEOUL April 30 Kyodo

(EDS: UPDATING WITH expositions FROM LEADERS OF N. KOREAN, s KOREAN DELEGATIONS, 8TH-11TH PARAS)

North Korea upon Wednesday pledged to resolve ''nuclear issues in the Korean peninsula'' in consequence of dialogue with South Korea moreover pointedly avoided making any commitment to a nuclear weapons-free Korean peninsula.

southerly Korea sought to stanch North Korea's nuclear ambitions between the sides of ministerial talks in Pyongyang which conclud early Wednesday with the release of a joint statement that made no relation to the issue of denuclearization.

Shin Eon Sang, spokesman of the southern Korean delegation to the ministerial talks, said North Korea rebuffed a South Korean proposal to include a regard to a 1991 North-South declaration onward denuclearization in the joint pres statement released in the early hours Wednesday.

''We wanted to include the intimation in the joint statement,'' Shin said, referring to the 1991 Joint Declaration upon Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, a bilateral earnest not to test, bring forward store, deploy or use nuclear weapons.

Instead, the joint statement said the sum of two units sides will discuss each other's position upon nuclear issues on the Korean peninsula and to explain the issues through dialogue.

The inter-Korean talks were held amid escalating tension after North Korea claimed last week in talks with the United States in Beijing that it already has produc nuclear weapons.

The pres statement said the pair sides will hold the nearest round of inter-Korea ministerial talks in Seoul forward July 9-12. The talks in Pyongyang were the first since southerly Korea's President Roh Moo Hyun took office in succession Feb. 25.

While holding its acres on the nuclear issue, the North Korean side also managed to extract from the southward a commitment to provide fertilizer -- and possibly rice -- to North Korea.

Kim Ryong hymn a senior cabinet councilor who headed the North Korean delegation, set forthed satisfaction on the talks and was upbeat about ties with the South

''The presumptions are very bright,'' Kim said after the talks in Pyongyang.

southward Korea's Unification Minister Jeong Se Hyun who headed the toward the south Korean delegation, was less enthusiastic. ''How can we be satisfied? We have follow up short,'' he said.

The pair sides also agreed to detain a series of events in June designed to aid inter-Korean reconciliation, including a reunion of separated family members and joint celebration of the 2000 inter-Korean summit.

The joint statement said the sum of two units sides will hold the fifth circular of bilateral economic talks forward May 19-22 in Pyongyang to discuss economic cooperation and other exchange schemes including the reconnection of railways and roads across the demilitarized belt and the tourism intend in the Mt. Kumgang region in North Korea.

North Korea signaled that it would take part in the Universiade games to be held in the southward Korean city Taegu in August. The statement said the couple sides agreed to hold talks forward North Korea's participation.

The five-member southward Korean delegation, originally scheduled to get back home on Tuesday, but lengthen outed its stay in Pyongyang to Wednesday as negotiators worked between the sides of the night to hammer without an agreement.

The ministerial talks are the highest channel end which the two Koreas have discussed expanding various ties and economic cooperation since the 2000 summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and then toward the south Korean President Kim Dae Jung

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