The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and The Republic of Korea (ROK) agreed on Thursday to resume cabinet-level talks in Seoul next month, news agencies reported.

At the end of the working-level inter-Korean talks that opened Monday in the DPRK's border city of Kaesong, the DPRK and ROK agreed to hold respectively ministerial talks in Seoul on June 21-24 and joint ceremonies in Pyongyang on June 15 to mark the 5th anniversary of the first-ever inter-Korean summit, the reports said.

The DPRK "pointed to the principled issues of fundamental significance in tiding over the abnormal situation beclouding the prospect of inter-Korean relations and developing them in the spirit of the June 15 joint declaration," said the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

The north side urged Seoul to "have the stand of developing the inter-Korean relations... by our nation itself and on the principle of national cooperation," the KCNA said.

According the Seoul-based Yonhap news agency, the two sides also agreed on ROK's provision of 200,000 tons of fertilizers to the DPRK. The DPRK initially requested 500,000 tons in January.

Nevertheless, Yonhap said the two sides were unable to make a clear breakthrough in bringing the DPRK back to six-party talks aimed at ending its nuclear program.

Despite last-ditch efforts to find common ground on resolving the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula, the two sides failed to insert the issue into a three-point joint press statement, said the Yonhap report.

The cabinet-level talks are the highest-level inter-Korean contact since last summer, when the DPRK called off the previously scheduled meeting amid political and military tension with Seoul.

The two countries have so far held 14 ministerial talks since the inter-Korean summit in Pyongyang on June 15, 2000. The meetings have been held alternately in their capitals at intervals of several months.

The just-concluded talks in Kaesong, originally scheduled for two days, were extended to Thursday as ROK insisted that the DPRK return to the six-party talks.

(Xinhua News Agency May 20, 2005)