Seoul, Jan 24: North Korea called for "national cooperation" with South Korea today as Seoul prepared to send special envoys to Pyongyang to help defuse the dispute over the communist country's nuclear development.

The two special envoys, representing outgoing president Kim Dae-Jung and president-elect Roh Moo-Hyun, will fly to Pyongyang aboard a presidential plane tomorrow to discuss the nuclear crisis and inter-Korean exchanges. The south has repeatedly urged the north to rescind its decision to pull out of a global nuclear arms control treaty, and wants Pyongyang to restore UN safeguards at nuclear facilities and suspend activity there.

Kim and Roh, who takes office next month, support a so-called "sunshine policy" of engaging the north and have called for a peaceful resolution to the crisis.
The north has also recently stressed inter-Korean cooperation, apparently trying to drive a wedge in the alliance between Seoul and Washington, which keeps 37,000 soldiers in the south.

"Now that the US imperialists' hostile moves against (North Korea) have reached the extremes, national cooperation is the way of saving the nation and the way of patriotism," the north's official ‘Rodong Sinmun’ newspaper said.

Bureau Report