North Korea ruled out more talks with South Korea Thursday, a day after military talks ended in acrimony, until Seoul shows interest in improving relations, dpa reported.
The two days of colonel-level talks "broke down after only wasting time," the North Korean delegation to the military talks said in a bulletin published by the North's official Korean Central News Agency.
"Our military and people no longer feel the need to meet under the condition where the traitor's group is entirely refusing to talk while being reluctant to improve inter-Korean relations," said the bulletin, which also called the South Korean negotiators "scoundrels."
"Our military and people cherish peace more than anyone but will never beg for it," it said. "It is the traditional response of our military and people to meet dialogue with dialogue and confrontation with confrontation."
The Defence Ministry in Seoul said the North and South could not agree what the focus of the next meetings should be as they met in the North Korean border village of Panmunjom.
The talks, the first discussions to be held between the two Koreas since the North's shelling of a South Korean island in November, ended without an agreement.
They had been aimed at preparing for higher level talks between generals or defence ministers to discuss relaxing tensions on the Korean Peninsula, but South Korea had demanded that before those talks could happen, the North would have to take responsibility for an artillery attack on Yeonpyeong Island in the Yellow Sea and the sinking of South Korea's Cheonan warship in March. The two incidents killed 50 South Koreans.
Both countries accused the other of firing first in the island attack, and South Korea said the sinking was caused by a North Korean torpedo, but Pyongyang denied involvement.
Both North and South also accused one another of unilaterally walking out of the defence talks.
Pyongyang said Thursday that the negotiations came to a halt seven times over their two days.
Colonel Moon Sang Gyun, South Korea's chief delegate to the talks, said the two sides exchanged bitter words over the shelling and sinking.
The North failed to admit responsibility for the two incidents, renewed its blame of Seoul over the Yeonpyeong attack and "called the Cheonan incident a smear campaign by South Korea and the US to rationalize what it calls a hostile policy against North Korea," Moon said.
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