Agence France-Presse,
North and South Korea Tuesday began their first top-level military talks in a year, but differences over the agenda quickly surfaced.
The North called for talks about the disputed western sea border, while the South says it wants the meeting to focus on securing a military security guarantee before the scheduled reopening of cross-border railways this month.
“Why doesn't your delegation include a Navy official?” the North's chief delegate Kim Young-Chol asked in opening remarks on the first of three days of talks at a North Korean building in the border truce village of Panmunjom.
“We would like to discuss ways of preventing conflicts in the West (Yellow) Sea as well,” he added, according to South Korean pool reporters quoted by Yonhap news agency.
Only the start of the meeting was open to the media.
The last general-level meeting in May 2006 ended without agreement after faltering over the North's demand for a new border in the Yellow Sea, the scene of several naval clashes in recent years.
The Northern Limit Line was drawn up by United Nations forces at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, but Pyongyang refuses to recognise it. Seoul insists this issue should be handled at talks between defence ministers.
Major General Jeong Seung-Jo, the South's chief negotiator, emphasised that this week's talks should be dedicated to plans to test railway lines across the heavily fortified border which have been out of action for half a century.
Following a historic inter-Korean summit in 2000, the two sides completed laying tracks alongside cross-border roads that opened in 2005 for limited traffic.
Test runs of the railways, in the west and on the east coast, were cancelled last year after the North's military failed to give a guarantee for their safe operation.
Seoul is pushing for such a guarantee before scheduled test runs on May 17.
