ARLINGTON,
Va., May 29 (Reuters) - The United States and North Korea will resume talks
next month on recovering more than 8,100 U.S. soldiers missing in action from
the Korean War, U.S. President Bill Clinton said on Monday. Clinton said the
nations hoped to resume joint operations to search for remains of U.S. soldiers
missing from the 1950-53 conflict by the end of this year as he marked the
Memorial Day holiday to honor U.S. soldiers killed serving their country. The
talks would take place in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur nearly 50 years
after North Korean communist forces invaded South Korea, triggering a three-year
conflict that ended with an armistice that divided the Korean peninsula into
two countries still technically at war. Their resumption appears part of the
diplomatic offensive that reclusive, Stalinist North Korea has launched in
recent months to end its Cold War isolation, notably through a June 12-14
Pyongyang summit that will bring together its enigmatic leader Kim Jong-il with
South Korean President Kim Dae-jung. “I am pleased to announce to you today
that the United States and North Korea have agreed to resume ... talks in the
first week of June in Kuala Lumpur in the hopes of resuming recovery operations
in North Korea this year,” Clinton said at a Memorial Day service at Arlington
National Cemetery.
“As we prepare to observe
the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Korean War on June the 25th, we
reaffirm our commitment to the more than 1.7 million American who served in
Korea, the more than 36,000 who lost their lives there and the more than 8,100
still missing,” he added. Clinton earlier laid a wreath at the cemetery's Tomb
of the Unknowns, a white marble sarcophagus placed near the graves of
unidentified U.S. soldiers who died in the First and Second World Wars as well
as in the Korean War. “The United States will always honor and never forsake
its fallen heroes,” Clinton said at the ceremony, drawing applause. “Wherever
it takes, as long as it takes, we will keep our commitment to seek the fullest
possible accounting.” The United States and North Korea have identified remains
of about 40 U.S soldiers killed during the Korean War through joint operations
carried out since 1996, a U.S. official told reporters. The official said the
two sides last met to discuss the issue six months ago and ran into some
disagreements that have since been resolved over how to carry out the
operations to search for missing U.S. soldiers in North Korea. “There were some
disagreements over the details that we have obviously worked out,” said the
official.
North Korea has taken
several diplomatic steps that signal a new willingness to deal with the outside
world, resuming diplomatic ties with Australia earlier this month after 25
years and scheduling the summit with South Korea in June.
This year Italy became the
first of the Group of Seven industrialized nations to forge diplomatic ties
with North Korea and its Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini visited Pyongyang in
March, the most senior Western official to do so. The warming of relations led
Dini to offer Rome as the venue for the fresh round of talks last week between
U.S. and North Korean officials on implementing a 1994 agreement to freeze
North Korea's nuclear programs. The two sides have met on and off in Europe and
the United States for the past six years after U.N. nuclear inspectors sounded
the alarm that North Korea's civilian atomic power plants could be a front for
an arms program. The 1994 agreement drew a pledge from the North Koreans to
halt development of old-style graphite-moderated nuclear reactors at Yongbyon.
Those reactors held radioactive fuel which could be used for nuclear arms
manufacture. In return, the West offered to build more up-to-date light-water
reactors.