South Korean legislators agreed Friday to a rare meeting with their North Korean counterparts for talks on improving relations and the North's possible participation in the Summer Olympics, officials said.
Plans for the meeting - the first since 1985 - were announced as hundreds of South Korean students fought sporadic battes with police after failing to win permission to march north for an inter-Korean meeting of their own, witnesses and news reports said.The nation's chief prosecutor accused the students of being pawns of North Korea in seeking to "foment social disorder" and disrupting the Seoul Summer Olympics, which open Sept. 17.
President Roh Tae-woo called on students to end the violence, noting that the games are "now only 36 days away and the eyes and ears of the world are focused on us."
South Korean National Assembly Speaker Kim Jae-sun sent a letter to North Korean Supreme People's Assembly leader Yang Hyong-sup agreeing to send five lawmakers to the truce village of Panmunjom, 35 miles north of Seoul, on Aug. 19 for a one-day meeting.
North Korea has proposed an unprecedented meeting of both nations' parliaments to discuss a non-aggression pact and possible participation of the North in the Olympics.
The South insisted on a smaller meeting of key lawmakers to see if a larger meeting in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang is feasible.