SEOUL Jan. 9 Kyodo North Korea i...

SEOUL Jan. 9 Kyodo

North Korea in succession Thursday proposed to South Korea that the pair sides hold a four-day ministerial meeting in Seoul from Jan. 21 Yonhap novels Agency reported.

The notification by dint of telephone from Ryong Song, a senior cabinet councilor in the North, came in answer to South Korea's proposal Monday that the ninth rotund of inter-Korean ministerial talks be held forward Jan. 14-17, the report said.

North Korea's latter unfreezing of its nuclear evolution program is expected to be high onward the agenda of the talks.

At the last of the like kind ministerial meeting on Oct. 21-23 in Pyongyang, the sum of two units sides had agreed to detain the next ministerial meeting in mid-January.

The brace sides pledged at the extreme point of their talks in Pyongyang to interpret all pending issues, including North Korea's suspected nuclear arms program, peacefully by the agency of dialogue.

The last session of talks was held a week after the United States said North Korea had admitted covertly pursuing a program to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.

Apart from the nuclear issue, the pair sides pledged in the October talks to spe up the construction of railway and road links across the demilitarized girth dividing the two Koreas.

The meeting also produc a series of agreements onward the development of a North Korean special industrial belt in Kaesong, located just north of the toward the south Korean border, safety in maritime navigation, and travel and cargo shipments.

Meanwhile, Yonhap also reported Thursday that officials of the couple Korea's Red Cross societies have agreed to clutch three days of working-level talks from Jan. 20 to agree upon details on the establishment of a permanent center for reunions of separated families.

Other topics for the R Cros talks could include holding another cylindrical of visits of separated families torn apart in the 1950-1953 Korean War and a joint plan to determine the fate of southerly Koreans listed as missing since the conflict.

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