 |
| The two Koreas have agreed to start surveys on reconnecting railways across the border between North and South |
The UN Security Council has granted a sanctions exemption for the two Koreas to jointly conduct a survey on reconnecting railways across their border, a spokesman for the South Korean presidency said Saturday.
The two
Koreas last month agreed to start the survey no later than late October and to
hold the groundbreaking ceremony sometime between late November and early
December, as the countries pursue a reconciliation drive.
But the
possibility of the project running up against UN sanctions imposed on North
Korea over its nuclear programmes has caused delays.
"It is
significant that this project has received support from the United States and
international community", said Kim Eui-Gyeom, spokesman for the
presidential Blue House in Seoul.
Railway
experts from both sides will criss-cross the country on survey trains together,
Kim said in a statement, adding that the process will "bring inter-Korean
cooperation to a new level".
Yonhap news
agency said the South was expected to bring fuel for train locomotives, and
other unspecified materials for the survey in the North.
Delivering
fuel to North Korea could potentially have been in breach of a UN cap limiting
imports to 500,000 barrels a year.
US
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Tuesday any inter-Korean rapprochement had
to move forward "in tandem" with efforts to denuclearise the
peninsula, and could not come sooner.
US
president Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un held a historic
summit in Singapore earlier this year, signing a vaguely worded deal on
denuclearisation.
But since
then, talks on denuclearisation have stalled, with meetings either deemed
unproductive, pushed back or cancelled altogether.
The US and
South Korea have launched a working group to make sure that they don't
"talk past each other", Pompeo said, as Seoul and Pyongyang appear to
be moving ahead with their rapprochement more quickly than Washington and the
North are making headway on nuclear disarmament.
A second
leaders' summit is expected to take place in early 2019, according to
Washington.
In the
meantime, North and South Korea have made several concrete decisions on
reconciliation and exchanges.
But the
implementation of cross-border projects such as the reconnection of railways
have been hamstrung by the lack of progress in denuclearisation talks.
 |
| South Korean President Moon Jae-in (L) advocates talking to the North's leader Kim Jong Un to push him to denuclearise (AFP Photo) |
Related Article:
No comments:
Post a Comment