ROANOKE TIMES 

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 29, 1994                   TAG: 9406290115
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: PANMUNJOM, KOREA                                LENGTH: Medium

KOREAS SET A DATE FOR HISTORIC SUMMIT

For the first time, North and South Korea on Tuesday set a date for a summit in another hopeful sign for efforts to ease nuclear tensions and end five decades of bitter animosity.

Summits have been proposed before and never actually held, and there was no guarantee this time would be different. Still, hopes were high the presidents of the two Koreas would finally hold their first face-to-face talks.

The meeting is planned for July 25-27 in Pyongyang, North Korea's capital.

``If the summit goes well, relations between South and North Korea will enter a new stage,'' said South Korea's chief negotiator, Lee Hong-koo.

South Korea hopes to focus the summit on suspicions that North Korea is working on nuclear weapons. But it is unclear whether the communist regime, which says its nuclear research is peaceful, will agree.

North Korea insists the nuclear issue can be resolved only in direct talks with the United States, which are due to restart July 8 in Geneva.

North Korea has agreed in the past to allow U.N. inspectors to check its nuclear facilities as required under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but it has refused to allow full inspections for 15 months.

That heightened worries that the North was rushing to produce nuclear warheads and brought threats of U.N. sanctions.

Washington has said it will improve diplomatic relations and extend aid if North Korea cooperates in resolving concerns about its nuclear program.

White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers said the North-South summit agreement was ``good news.''

``We always encouraged a dialogue between North and South Korea as a step toward ultimate reconciliation and reunification. This is something that we always said they had to work out among themselves, but they appear to have done that,'' she said.

Negotiators agreed the meeting of northern President Kim Il Sung and southern President Kim Young-sam would be followed by a second summit in South Korea. But in a discordant note, they failed to agree on a date or place.

Nevertheless, optimism soared in South Korea.

``My heart is throbbing with excitement,'' said Lee Yong-ho, 68, who escaped from the North to South Korea during the 1950-53 Korean War. ``I really hope that the summit will help ease tensions, so that divided families in the two Koreas can be reunited.'' 


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