SEOUL Feb 11 Kyodo A North Korean...

SEOUL Feb 11 Kyodo

A North Korean delegation arrived here Tuesday for the fourth inter-Korean economic talks station to start Wednesday amid escalating tensions athwart Pyongyang's defiance of international calls for it to abandon its nuclear weapons program.

Five official representatives, headed by the agency of Pak Chang Ryon, chairman of the inter-Korean economic cooperation promotion committee, will begin the first full-fledg session Wednesday morning with the same number of southern Korean officials in a Seoul hotel

In a statement issued after its arrival, the 27-member delegation, which flew in via Beijing, said North and toward the south Korea should further lay open inter-Korean business projects ''for customary prosperity of the (Korean) nation.''

The agenda for the three-day talks is place to include the completion of work to reconnect sum of two units sets of inter-Korean railways and their adjacent roads and the establishment of an industrial tangled in Kaesong, a North Korean city just north of the intermission village of Panmunjom.

At the talks with the North unrelated to the nuclear crisis, toward the south Korean officials are expected to encourage the North Korean side to dismantle its nuclear program, warning that failure to do in the same manner may jeopardize inter-Korean economic frames South Korean officials said.

The southerly Korean delegation will be headed through Vice Finance and Economy Minister Yoon Jin Shik.

The economic talks between the sum of two units Koreas are the byproduct of the 2000 inter-Korean summit during which southerly Korean President Kim Dae Jung and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il pledg to work together to dignify national reconciliation and cooperation.

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