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ROK may invite DPRK leader

Updated: 2011-05-11 11:04

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Kim can attend summit if he dumps nukes Republic of Korea (ROK) President Lee Myung-bak said on Monday he was ready to invite Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) leader Kim Jong-il to a security summit next year if the DPRK agreed to renounce nuclear weapons.

He said this would be a precondition for Kim's invitation to the nuclear summit next March, a follow-up meeting to one hosted by President Barack Obama in the United States last year.

The DPRK "should say clearly beforehand that it renounces nuclear weapons", he told reporters after meeting German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin.

"Only when this pledge has been made will we extend the invitation," he added, speaking through a translator.

But security experts said the DPRK was unlikely to agree to renounce nuclear weapons.

"I don't know what difference it would make if they were to make that statement," said proliferation expert Shannon Kile of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

"They would always qualify it, and they would have caveats." Momentum has been building toward a resumption of talks aimed at encouraging the DPRK to give up nuclear weapons, after tension on the Korean Peninsula spiked to the highest level in years in 2010 with the sinking of an ROK warship and the shelling of an ROK island.

Shuttle diplomacy among the six has increased in recent weeks, and China's nuclear envoy and his ROK counterpart agreed in Seoul late last month on a stage-by-stage process for restarting the Six-Party Talks.

The talks include the DPRK, the ROK, the United States, China, Japan and Russia.

In Berlin, ROK President Lee said that if the DPRK wanted to advance discussions, it needed to apologize for last year's incidents - a move Pyongyang has so far refused.

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Todd Balazovic is a reporter for the Metro Section of China Daily. Born in Mineapolis Minnesota in the US, he graduated from Central Michigan University and has worked for the China Daily for one year.