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South and North Korean Leaders to Hold Talks at UN Summit
South Korean President Kim Dae-Jung will meet North Korea's honorary head of state Kim Yong-Nam during their trip to the United States next month, officials said Wednesday.
The meeting on September 6 will be held on the sidelines of the United Nations Millennium Summit in New York, the president's office said.
Kim Yong-Nam, head of the presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly, is the highest ranking North Korean official to attend a UN meeting.
His trip underlines North Korea's diplomatic offensive that began last month at the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Regional Forum (ARF) in Bangkok.
During the three-day UN conference, Kim Dae-Jung will urge world leaders to support the inter-Korean rapprochement which followed an unprecedented summit between the two Koreas in June.
"The president will make a keynote speech to the summit to explain the meaning and outcome of the inter-Korean summit," the president's office said in a statement.
"He will present his vision of how inter-Korean reconciliation, cooperation and co-prosperity could develop an era of peace and great advancement on the Korean peninsula," it said.
The meeting with Kim Yong-Nam will cover various measures on how to implement a reconciliation accord signed during the June summit, it said.
The office said Kim Dae-Jung would hold a series of talks with US President Bill Clinton, Chinese President Jiang Zemin and Russian President Vladimir Putin to brief them on the inter-Korean rapprochement.
South Korean officials said the UN summit would help open a new era of diplomatic cooperation between the two Koreas, which have been engaged in bitter Cold War confrontation for decades.
They said the two Koreas would jointly seek an unprecedented UN resolution supporting their reconciliation, which climaxed last week with the heart-rending reunions of separated families.
The resolution will be reaffirmed in October when South Korea hosts a summit meeting of 25 Asian and European leaders. North Korea have not yet confirmed whether they will take part.
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