Koreas Agree To Hold Nuke Talks

North and South Korea set dates for high-level talks on Wednesday, boosting the diplomatic drive for a peaceful solution to a nuclear dispute despite signs the North has increased military patrols near its border with the South.

The meetings are good news, reports CBS News Correspondent Barry Petersen.

It means that talks are going ahead, while the American diplomats are in the region, trying to work with China, South Korea and Japan. South Korea will be meeting directly with representatives from the North next week. Although they have a variety of issues to discuss, they do say that the North Korean nuclear weapons program will be on the agenda, and that's the way Seoul says it wants to handle the problem.

The announcement that the two Koreas would hold a round of Cabinet-level meetings later this month was matched by hopeful comments by U.S. envoy James Kelly, who said before meetings in Beijing he was "reassured" by efforts to persuade the North to give up its nuclear weapons development.

"There's no substitute for communication," Kelly said.

The reclusive regime in Pyongyang, however, kept up its drumbeat of anti-American invective through the state-run media, blaming nuclear proliferation on the United States and accusing Washington of using its weapons to threaten and blackmail other nations.

"Despite the fact that we're seeing these thunderbolts of propaganda from the North, we've also seen a pretty consistent by the North to keep talking, meeting, for instance, with former U.N. ambassador Bill Richardson, now the governor of New Mexico," said Petersen.

"The fact the North wants to go ahead with next week's talks is another sign that somewhere in North Korea there are cooler heads saying the way out of this crisis is to talk ourselves out of this crisis," the veteran Far East correspondent added.

In fact, the public bluster had no effect on diplomatic moves in the region. In Seoul, the South Korean government announced that it had agreed with Pyongyang to hold Cabinet-level talks on Jan. 21-24. The confrontation over the North's nuclear weapons programs was expected to be on the agenda.

Tensions on the peninsula have been rising since North Korea admitted in October to having a secret nuclear program. Last week the communist regime announced its withdrawal from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and threatened to begin testing missiles again.

South Korean officials have said they would use all inter-Korean contacts to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear ambitions. The upcoming talks would be the ninth round the two countries have had since a North-South summit in June 2000 and the first since October.

While the North has maintained its antagonistic stance against the United States, it has not made any alarming moves on the ground.

The U.S. military has spotted increased patrols by North Korean soldiers over the past week in one area of the Demilitarized Zone dividing the Korean Peninsula, said Lt. Col. Matthew Margotta, who commands a combined battalion of U.S. and South Korean soldiers.

But the moves in the 2½-mile-wide, 156-mile-long DMZ were "not alarming, just unusual," and were probably "triggered by a heightening of tensions," Margotta said.

The North Koreans have also occupied a guard tower in the DMZ that hadn't been used in years, he said.

In a speech Wednesday at the Yongsan command headquarters for U.S. troops in South Korea, President-elect Roh Moo-hyun called the U.S.-South Korean alliance the "driving force" for security in the region.

"We can never accept North Korea's nuclear weapons program," Roh said, calling for an international diplomatic effort to defuse the standoff. "The South Korean-U.S. alliance should be the basis for this effort," he said.

The United States keeps 37,000 troops based in South Korea, and the accidental killing of two teenage girls by American GIs driving a military vehicle has increased calls that the force be scaled down.

In Beijing, Kelly, an Assistant Secretary of State, went into talks at the Chinese Foreign Ministry saying he was optimistic about international efforts to peacefully resolve the confrontation.

China has offered to host negotiations between the United States and North Korea.

"I had excellent meetings in Korea. I am very reassured," said Kelly, who arrived from Seoul on Tuesday night. "We have to keep talking with each other to make sure that things are done in the best possible way."

On Wednesday, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, urged Russia to become involved in the diplomatic efforts, saying Moscow could play a "vitally important role."

North Korea has been issuing daily diatribes against the United States through its state-run media. On Wednesday, Pyongyang's KCNA news agency rejected international concern over its nuclear programs and said nuclear proliferation was started by the United States.

"In 1945, the U.S. produced three A-bombs and tested one of them in its mainland and dropped the other two on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, inflicting nuclear holocaust on the Japanese for the first time in human history," the dispatch said.

The United States and other countries are now trying to shift the blame to North Korea and pressuring it to rejoin the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, said the report, monitored in Seoul.

As part of its efforts, Washington has taken a more conciliatory approach.

President Bush said on Tuesday that he would consider reviving a proposal offering substantial economic benefits for North Korea if it agrees to dismantle its nuclear weapons facilities.

The administration had been prepared to make such an offer last year but withdrew it after learning that the North Koreans had initiated a uranium-based nuclear weapons program.

In talks earlier this week in Seoul, Kelly indicated the United States might help North Korea meet its energy needs if the nuclear issue is resolved.