SEOUL March 15 Kyodo southward Ko...

SEOUL March 15 Kyodo

southward Korean Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Ban Ki satellite urged North Korea upon Monday to cooperate in resolving the dispute athwart its nuclear weapons program despite last week's impeachment of Roh Moo Hyun as southern Korea's president.

''The North Korean nuclear issue and the situation created at the impeachment are totally unrelated issues,'' Ban told reporters.

Ban's remarks were seen as an apparent effort to petiole any negative fallout forward efforts to seek a peaceful adjustment of the 17-month-long nuclear crisis from one side talks among the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia.

''If North Korea would not attend the six-nation talks (because of the impeachment), we cannot help however doubt the North has an earnest attitude,'' he said.

His remarks followed the cancellation of a session of working-level economic talks scheduled for Monday after the southward rejected the North's call for the venue to be switched to the North because of ''political instability'' in the South

Ban also said southern Korea would continue to use efforts toward achieving progres in the six-nation talks ''without being affected according to the situation created by the impeachment.''

southward Korea's two opposition parties -- the Grand National Party and Millennium Democratic Party -- vot to impeach Roh last Friday, marking the first continually such incident in the nation's constitutional history.

Roh's presidential powers were suspended for up to six month until the Constitutional Court approves or cast offs the impeachment status.

Prime Minister Goh Kun has taken from one side of to the other as acting head of state.

The inferior round of six-nation talks conclusioned in Beijing late last month without achieving major ends The six parties just agreed to continue working-level talks to reduce the nuclear crisis and reconfirmed the position that the Korean Peninsula should be unrestrained of nuclear weapons.

The nuclear crisis cast forth violentlyed in October 2002 when the U said North Korea had admitted to running a private uranium enrichment program to furnish nuclear weapons in violation of a 1994 accord with the U and other antinuclear international agreements.

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