N. Korea proposes lawmaker talks with South

SEOUL:  South Korean political parties have received letters from North Korea proposing talks between the two countries' legislators to ease tensions, officials said Monday, days after military talks broke down.

The unification ministry said the letters were delivered last Friday via China. It was unclear when they were sent.Last Thursday the North had said there was no need for further cross border dialogue following the collapse of the military talks, which it blamed on "traitors" in the South.

Army officers from the two sides held two days of talks last week, the first cross-border meeting since the North's deadly shelling of a South Korean island on November 23.The North walked out of that meeting after the South demanded an apology at future talks both for the bombardment and for the sinking of a South Korean warship last March.

The shelling killed four people including two civilians. Seoul says Pyongyang also torpedoed the ship with the loss of 46 lives, a charge it denies.The unification ministry, which must authorise all inter Korean contacts, did not say whether it would approve any meeting of legislators.

But it said last week that planned Red Cross talks to arrange family reunions could not go ahead now the military talks had collapsed.Dropping its fiery rhetoric, the North this year has sent a spate of appeals for talks. The ministry said religious organisations and social groups in the South had received similar proposals.

Both China and the United States are trying to revive stalled six party talks on the North's nuclear weapons programmes, and the North is reportedly seeking separate US food aid for its hungry people.But Washington says Pyongyang must improve ties with Seoul before the six-party negotiations which offer diplomatic and economic benefits in return for denuclearisation can resume.

The North now "wants to construct a narrative that has the South blocking the resumption of six arty talks tied to denuclearisation, and sell that story to China and the United States", the JoongAng Daily said in a Monday editorial.