North Korea, South Korea Exchange Fire on DMZ
Wednesday, July 16, 2003
WASHINGTON — South Korean and North Korean soldiers exchanged gunfire across the Demilitarized Zone Thursday morning.
North Korea fired first with four shots at a South Korean army position at 6:10 a.m. The South fired 17 rounds in response one minute later, said Maj. Lee of the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The South reported no injuries among its soldiers, and it was not immediately known what, if any, casualties were suffered on the North's side. Such incidents are rare along the DMZ.
The clash between the two neighbors comes amid heightened tensions on the peninsula over the closed-off communist country's nuclear ambitions.
Diplomacy appeared to be making headway Wednesday, when the United States was told by Chinese officials Pyongyang was no longer insisting on bilateral negotiations on its nuclear weapons programs, Fox News has learned.
Pyongyang had so far only officially insisted on direct talks with Washington, and even repeated its claim Wednesday that U.S. demands for multilateral talks to resolve the crisis were complicating the issue.
Diplomats from the United States and China were working to arrange another round of multi-party talks as were held in April in Beijing. North Korean officials told the State Department last week that the nation had moved a critical step closer to producing nuclear bombs.
But the official line in Washington is still that Japan and South Korea must also be present at the table -- a demand to which North Korea has not yet acquiesced.
Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo is due in Washington later this week to brief Secretary of State Colin Powell on his recent meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il, a senior State Department official told Fox News.
"The Chinese are working very hard for multilateral talks," the official said. "We're very happy with them."
Secretary of State Colin Powell expressed optimism Wednesday about efforts to resolve the standoff with North Korea over its nuclear weapons programs.
Powell said he had a long conversation Tuesday night with Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing to discuss a visit to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, by one of Li's deputies. Powell said Li gave him an account of conversations the visiting official had with the North Koreans.
"So the diplomatic track is alive and well and I expect to see some developments along that track in the very near future," Powell told reporters after meeting with German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer.
Powell said he told Fischer the United States "is still hopeful of a diplomatic solution."
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher declined to provide details on Powell's conversation with the Chinese minister, except to say it was a "thorough discussion."
He said the United States was pleased with the strong role China has been playing in trying to resolve the crisis
"We're pleased the Chinese have been active participants in trying to encourage multilateral discussions" with the North Koreans, Boucher said, "and also in representing Chinese interests which are very strong in seeing a non-nuclear Korean peninsula.
Washington says North Korea's nuclear ambitions are a regional threat and talks on resolving the issue should include China, South Korea, Japan and possibly Russia.
North Korea claims to have completed reprocessing 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods, which are used to produce weapons-grade fissile material to make nuclear bombs.
The United States has confirmed that the North Koreans have been actively reprocessing at their Yongbyon (search) nuclear plant, the facility U.S. officials say is the possible center of North Korea's uranium reprocessing efforts.
North Korea has repeatedly demanded one-on-one talks with the United States with the hope of gaining security guarantees. North Korea also is desperate for economic aid.
Powell said the United States is examining whether to admit thousands of North Korean refugees as a way of putting pressure on Pyongyang during the nuclear standoff.
"But there are no proposals that are before the president or before me at this point," Powell said." It's just an item of continuing study on our part."
The Washington Post, which first reported the plan on refugees, said U.S. officials have not settled on how many refugees the United States would be willing to accept.
The newspaper said one faction in the Bush administration is pushing for as many as 300,000 refugees, while others believe such a step would hurt relations with China and have countered with a proposal to admit 3,000.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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