Seoul Officials Visit NK for Bird Flu Talks | April 22, 2005

4-21-2005

Again religion is not overtly mentioned in this article. Nevertheless all signs of thaw and collaboration on the Korean peninsula is happily welcomed. The nuclear threat is a great concern not just for Korea but for the world, more important though is the myriad blessings and abundance that will surely devolve from Korean unification.

By Reuben Staines
Staff Reporter
The Korea Times

In a sign of thawing relations, a South Korean government delegation visited North Korea Friday to discuss collaborative measures for containing an outbreak of bird flu in the communist nation, the Unification Ministry said.

Three officials and eight support staff traveled by car across the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone to the North’s border city of Kaesong for the talks, the ministry said. The South Korean delegation was led by Kim Chang-seob, a quarantine official from the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, it said.

`I’m hopeful that these talks will serve as an opportunity to open a new phase of inter-Korean relations,’’ Vice Unification Minister Rhee Bong-jo told members of the delegation during a meeting before they left for the North.

Rhee said Seoul will give Pyongyang its full support to combat the avian influenza, which North Korea acknowledged last month had infected chickens at three farms around its capital city.

The consultation was the first time the two Koreas have engaged in government-level talks since July.

North Korea proposed the talks in a telephone message last week after accepting Seoul’s offer to assist in tackling the fast-spreading bird flu.

South Korea has agreed to ship quarantine equipment worth around 720 million won ($713,000) to North Korea’s western port of Nampo on Saturday.

U.N. officials believe the virus is under control but will require several months of monitoring to ensure it is fully eradicated.

The Food and Agriculture Organization said no human cases of the virus have been reported in the North.

North Korea believes the virus is of the H7 strain, not the more severe H5N1 virus that has claimed around 50 lives in Southeast Asia since late 2003.

However, the outbreak has forced it to cull about 210,000 chickens, according to the Unification Ministry.

Kaesong, where the bird flu consultation was held, is also the site of a new inter-Korean industrial complex and is seen as a symbol of national reconciliation.

Relations between Seoul and Pyongyang have been at a low ebb over the past nine months after Seoul airlifted more than 460 North Korean refugees from Vietnam, the single largest mass defection ever. The North accused it of kidnapping them and cancelled previously scheduled talks.

Posted by admin at April 22, 2005 10:11 AM