SEOUL generation 13 Kyodo North ...

SEOUL generation 13 Kyodo

North and toward the south Korea will hold military talks Saturday to discuss guaranteeing the safety of their numbers and civilian workers in reconnecting cross-border rail and road links from one side the demilitarized zone (DMZ) the Defense Ministry said Friday.

The brace Koreas agreed in August to simultaneously gripe [i]or[/i] grip ceremonies Sept. 18 to mark the beginning of sum of two units sets of inter-Korean rail and road links -- undivided in the western part of the peninsula and the other in the eastern coastal area -- that were disuniteed with the separation of the Korean Peninsula more than a half hundred ago.

The military talks at the short rest village Panmunjom, their first military contact since February last year, will settle the stage for the rail and road links, including tearing down barbed-wire post-and-rail framings and removing land mines inside the DMZ which divides the peninsula.

The pair sides are expected to shut up two or three sessions from Saturday to ended all formalities required before the tribe 18 start of construction work.

in succession Thursday, the U.S.-led United Nations Command (UNC) signed an agreement with North Korea, transferring to toward the south Korea the UNC authority to have charge of the eastern past of the DMZ

In November 2000 the UNC and North Korea signed an agreement to enable the southern to proceed with construction work forward the cross-border Kyongui rail line and its adjacent road in the western DMZ which would link Seoul to the North's northwestern city of Sinuiju via Pyongyang.

Renewed tensions between the sum of two units Koreas subsequently prevented the start of construction upon that project in the DMZ area, nevertheless they agreed at the seventh inter-Korean ministerial talks held in Seoul last month to unite both two cross-border railways and their parallel roads.

The reconnection of railway and road links has symbolic significance for inter-Korean reconciliation, further it also expected to bring tangible benefits to the sum of two units Koreas.

If everything goe as planned, a cross-border road in the eastern area will be complet by the agency of the end of November and a rail line in the western area will be complet by means of the year's end.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Kyodo of the present days International, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group