SEOUL/MOSCOW: North and South Korea failed to reach any concrete agreement during their military talks on Thursday, as two-star generals from both sides met just two days after US President Donald Trump floated his plan to halt joint exercises with South Korea.

The talks, their first in more than a decade, held in the border village of Panmunjom in the demilitarised zone (DMZ), followed on from an inter-Korean summit in April at which leaders of the two Koreas had agreed to defuse tensions and cease “all hostile acts”.

They agreed to implement a 2004 agreement, in which the two sides’ militaries vowed to work to prevent unexpected clash in the West Sea, a joint statement said. They also discussed the planned establishment of a hotline between the two militaries, but failed to set the specific time table for its reinstatement.

Kim Do-gyun, the South’s lead negotiator who is in charge of North Korea policy at the Defence Ministry, said before departing for the DMZ that the two sides would discuss the schedule of a ministerial meeting, which was not addressed in a joint statement.

“The nature of the tasks was not to be resolved at once,” Kim told reporters after the meeting.

The talks came two days after Trump said he would stop “expensive, provocative” war games with the South, following his historic summit in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Trump’s move had caught Seoul officials off guard as Washington did not give them a prior notice. But South Korean President Moon Jae-in said on Thursday his government would have to be flexible when it came to military pressure on North Korea if it was sincere about denuclearisation. The military talks had been initially slated for May, but were postponed after the North called off another planned high-level meeting in protest against US-South Korean air combat exercises.

The process was put back on track during a surprise second summit early this month between Kim and Moon. The last time the two Koreas held military talks was in 2007.

Ahn Ik-san, the North’s chief delegate, said the delay was due to “certain headwinds” without elaborating, adding the two sides should overcome future obstacles based on mutual understanding and the spirit of the inter-Korean summit.

Putin invites Kim to Russia

President Vladimir Putin on Thursday conveyed to a senior North Korean official an invitation for Kim Jong Un to visit Russia as he praised the results of his summit with Donald Trump.

Hosting Kim Yong Nam, North Korea’s ceremonial head of state, Putin said the historic summit with the US president was “without doubt just the first step towards a full-blown settlement”. “Thanks to this meeting a possible negative scenario has been cast aside,” Putin said.

“Certainly it creates conditions for further forward movement and decreases general tensions around the Korean peninsula,” he added.

Published in Dawn, June 15th, 2018