Military talks between UNC, DPRK fall through
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Military talks earlier this week between the U.S.-led United Nations Command (UNC) and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) fell through, the UNC said Friday.
The two sides held Wednesday the seventh round of colonel-level talks to prepare for a general-level meeting over the sinking of a South Korean warship in March, which killed 46 South Korean sailors.
"At the meeting, the Korea People's Army Panmunjom Mission declined to hold General Officer Talks and continued to refuse to accept the procedures laid out in the Armistice Agreement for conducting a joint investigation," the UNC, which supervises a ceasefire that ended the 1950-53 Korean War, said in a statement.
The UNC had asked the DPRK to conduct a joint probe to determine whether the attack, for which Pyongyang denies any responsibility, violated the armistice agreement.
The DPRK, which claims a Seoul-led multinational probe team fabricated its findings, had proposed to send its own team of investigators to Seoul. But Seoul rejected the request.
"No other meetings have been scheduled," the UNC said.
As part of a trust-building measure, the command and the DPRK have held 16 general-level talks since 1998, and the latest round was held in March 2009.
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