Seoul courts Pyongyang SOUTH Korea has proposed high-level military talks with North Korea, focussing on ways to avoid accidental clashes now that the North has announced that it has nuclear weapons. South Korea's Defence Ministry said the talks would be a way of engaging North Korea even as it refuses to return to six-nation talks on its nuclear programme. "North Korea has yet to respond to our proposal, but we are expecting the North side to make a sincere and positive response," the ministry said Tuesday. In Pyongyang, the ruling Workers' Party officials and military officers gathered Tuesday to celebrate the birthday of the leader Kim Jong Il, who turned 63 on Wednesday. South Korean officials have said it's too early to declare Pyongyang a nuclear power. They say Pyongyang should return to six-nation talks aimed at getting it to give up any nuclear weapons development in return for economic benefits. South Korean intelligence officials said Tuesday that even if North Korea has nuclear weapons, it lacks the technology to deliver them by missile. In a briefing to National Assembly members, the intelligence officials also said there was little possibility that the North had exported its nuclear technology. That counters recent claims by US officials who said there is strong evidence that North Korea has developed another Scud missile with a longer range and better accuracy than conventional Scud missiles. North Korea shocked the region in 1998 by testing a three-stage Taepodong- 1 missile that flew over Japan and landed in the Pacific. That missile is believed to have a 1,540- mile range, enough to reach all but the most far- flung of Japan's islands. The US has moved to choke off North Korea's few remaining sources of income as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice began talks with allies to step up pressure against the nuclear-armed Stalinist state. Rice on Monday appointed US envoy to South Korea Christopher Hill to take on the additional role as head of the American delegation to the meeting, last convened in June 2004. Hill takes over from retired assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs James Kelley. The New York Times reported Monday that the US was preparing strategies to tighten the noose on North Korea by cutting off its few remaining sources of income. Trashing democracy A LEADING figure in Nepal's largest political party renewed calls for the Indian government to stop assisting the Himalayan kingdom militarily, reports Rajeshree Sisodia from Kathmandu Last Friday, Sujata Koirala, a politician with the Nepali Congress Party (NCP) and daughter of former Nepalese prime minister Girija Prasad Koirala, issued her demands in New Delhi hours after arriving in the Indian capital after fleeing her native Nepal. Her father remains under house arrest along with dozens of other Nepalese politicians, political activists and human rights campaigners. Political tension heightened in the Nepalese capital Katmandu after the country's monarch, King Gyanendra, sacked Nepal's coalition government and seized complete political control in a coup on 1 February. "It's not only India, it's also the United States. I request both of them to cut down on military aid... the NCP has requested all donor countries to stop giving aid to the Nepalese army," said Choral in New Delhi. Continued international military support for King Gynandry's rule, she added, would undermine attempts to establish democracy in Nepal. But her pleas fell on deaf ears in New Delhi. Though the Indian government asserted it supports multi-party democracy in Nepal and has urged the king to remove restrictions imposed on Nepalese politicians, New Delhi, which according to the India-based Nepali Youth Initiative for Peace and Democracy, has supplied Nepal with arms in the last three years, has pledged to continue funding the king's military regime. Defending the decision, Indian Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee said India had a big stake in Nepal's stability adding that ongoing unrest in Nepal could spill over the border into the sub- continent. "We recognise that if the security situation in Nepal deteriorates, it will heighten our security threat," he said. King Gyanendra, supreme commander of the 78,000-strong Royal Nepalese Army (RNA), has attempted to justify his autocratic measures as the only way to bring democracy to Nepal in the next three years. He seized power last week after the country's coalition government failed to set a date for elections and failed to bring Maoist forces -- who have been waging a civil war in Nepal for more than a decade -- to the negotiating table. But King Gyanendra's decision to impose nationwide media censorship, ban basic civil rights, including the right to free speech and to assemble peacefully in public has been condemned by the Indian government, the US, Britain and the UN. Meanwhile violence between the RNA and Maoist forces, who oppose royal rule and want the RNA to be disbanded and replaced with a national army under the jurisdiction of a democratically elected parliament, continues. Human rights campaigners were also rounded up by police in riot gear during a pro-democracy demonstration in Katmandu last Thursday. Britain woos South Asia BRITISH Foreign Secretary Jack Straw arrived Monday in Pakistan for talks on bilateral cooperation, terrorism and the India-Pakistan peace process, Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said. Straw was due to meet Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and his Pakistani counterpart, Khursheed Kasuri, on Monday in the Pakistani capital Islamabad. Straw's visit comes days after the Commonwealth of former British colonies rebuked Musharraf for breaking a promise to step down as army chief. Musharraf, who seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999, had pledged to leave the top army post by the end of 2004 and become a civilian head of state. Musharraf is a key ally in the US-led war on terrorism and has faced little pressure from Western allies for backsliding on democracy. After his three-day visit to Pakistan, Straw is set to travel to Afghanistan and then India. On Tuesday, India's External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh arrived in Islamabad for talks to push forward a year-long peace process with archrival Pakistan. Relations have warmed between the two countries, but little progress has been made on their competing claims to Kashmir -- a dispute dating back to independence from Britain in 1947.
