SEOUL April 3 Kyodo President Roh...

SEOUL April 3 Kyodo

President Roh Moo Hyun urg North Korea in succession Thursday to continue talks with toward the south Korea amid concerns the North may cancel nearest week's 10th inter-Korean ministerial talks, his chief spokeswoman said.

''Relations between the southward and the North can improve and nothing else by mutual efforts,'' Roh was quot by means of Song Kyoung Hee as telling a meeting of his senior secretaries.

The ministerial talks are the highest channel end which the two Koreas have discussed reconciliation and bilateral cooperation since the 2000 inter-Korean summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and then southern Korean President Kim Dae Jung

The talks, scheduled to last for four days from nearest Monday in Pyongyang, will be the first meeting since Roh took office Feb 25

At the Pyongyang talks, southern Korean officials are expected to encourage the North to scrap its nuclear weapons program, which will lead to discussing economic aid for the North.

Amid rising tensions through its suspected nuclear weapons program, North Korea canceled couple working-level talks with South Korea last week.

Nor has North Korea made any signs of preparing for nearest week's talks.

In the previous cylindrical of the cabinet-level talks, southward Korea also urged North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

The impasse through the whole extent of the North's nuclear weapons program cast forth violentlyed last October when the United States said the North had admitted to running a program to enrich uranium for use in nuclear weapons in violation of a 1994 antinuclear agreement.

North Korea has also taken a series of degrees to escalate tensions by means of reactivating a mothballed nuclear reactor and withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the global antinuclear pact.

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