2 Koreas to resume high-level talks

The two Koreas will hold talks late this month aimed at improving relations, a South Korean official said Thursday, the first sign of easing tensions between the countries after the North signed a nuclear disarmament agreement.

North Korea's top envoy to six-nation talks nuclear talks also said Pyongyang is ready to implement the accord reached earlier this week, Japan's Kyodo News agency reported.

"The talks went well," the agency quoted North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan as saying after returning from Beijing. "We are ready to implement the results of the meeting."

The Cabinet-level talks between the two Koreas will be held in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, from Feb. 27 to March 2, according to a statement adopted at a lower-level meeting Thursday in the North Korean border city of Kaesong.

South and North Korea have held 19 high-level meetings since 2000, but they have been suspended amid chilled relations following North Korea's missile launches in July and its nuclear test in October.

The meetings have served as a forum for discussing Seoul's aid to the impoverished North, and could lead to a resumption of the regular delivery of rice and fertilizer to the communist nation. South Korea suspended aid after the missile tests in July.

South Korean delegate Lee Kwan-se said the planned talks will help "advance reconciliation and cooperation between the South and the North, and promote peace on the Korean peninsula."

"The North side, just as we did, wanted to restore South-North relations and resume dialogue to discuss pending issues," Lee said, according to South Korean media reports.

The two Koreas remain technically at war since the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a cease-fire.

The disarmament pact reached Tuesday among the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States is worth about $250 million in aid to the North.

It requires North Korea to seal its main nuclear reactor, allow international inspections and begin accounting for other nuclear programs within 60 days. In return, North Korea will receive 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil, a down payment on a promised 1 million tons in oil or aid of a similar value if it ultimately disarms.

In a telephone conversation Thursday with President Bush, Chinese President Hu Jintao reiterated his country's commitment to help implement the agreement, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Hu said China was "willing to maintain close communication and cooperation with the United States and other parties concerned ... to play a constructive role" in the process, Xinhua cited Hu as saying.

In Washington, the Bush administration sought to ease concern among conservatives that the deal goes too easy on North Korea.

White House press secretary Tony Snow said Thursday that one of President Bush's deputy national security advisers, Elliott Abrams, had questioned whether North Korea could be removed from a list of terror-sponsoring states under the agreement.

Snow said he had assured Abrams that would not happen unless the North changes its behavior. "The North Koreans don't get it for free," Snow said. "They've got to earn it, like everything else."

John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has also called the agreement "fundamentally flawed," saying it rewards the North for behaving badly. Bush dismissed Bolton's assessment, saying North Korea would receive no aid unless it lives up to its end of the deal.

North Korea, meanwhile, showed no sign of easing its harsh anti-U.S. rhetoric, with its No. 2 leader ordering soldiers and citizens to maintain a war posture to counter the threat of a military assault by Washington.

"We will mercilessly repel the aggressors and achieve reunification by mobilizing" in case of a U.S. attack, Kim Yong Nam warned Thursday in a speech to thousands of officials that was carried on North Korean state television and monitored in South Korea.

Such tough talk is not unusual and appears directed at North Koreans as they prepare to celebrate Kim Jong Il's 65th birthday Friday. North Korea regularly accuses the U.S. of planning an attack. U.S. officials say they have no such intention.

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AP writer Ben Feller contributed to this report from Washington.