- (AFP) -- South Korean and North Korean troops exchanged
gunfire in a border shootout that triggered alarm here amid diplomatic
efforts to end a prolonged stand-off over the communist nation's nuclear
ambitions.
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- The shootout between North and South Korean guard posts
in the buffer zone lasted for nearly one minute. North Korean machine gun
rounds hit the wall of the South Korean guard post, Colonel Lee Hong-Gi
of the South's joint chiefs of staff (JCS) said.
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- South Korean troops suffered no casualties but it was
not known whether any of the North Koreans were hurt, Lee told a media
briefing.
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- The shooting took place as diplomatic efforts to resolve
the nuclear crisis appeared to be making progress.
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- US and South Korean officials said the North might return
to talks, as China seeks to engage the Stalinist country in multilateral
talks demanded by the United States. Pyongyang has previously insisted
on bilateral talks with Washington.
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- South Korean military officials said the shooting may
have erupted by accident.
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- But Lee did not rule out the possibility it could have
been intended to further draw attention to the nine-month-old nuclear crisis
that began in October last year.
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- "We do not rule out an intentional provocation related
to the international situation surrounding North Korea's nuclear problem,"
he said.
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- North Korean troops fired four rounds from a machine
gun at 6:10 am (2110 GMT Wednesday) while South Korean soldiers hit back
with 17 rounds from an M-60 machine gun, Lee said.
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- Three rounds hit the South Korean guard post, about 1,100
meters (yards) from the North Korean post in the central portion of the
four-kilometer (2.5-mile) wide Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).
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- The shootout near Yoncheon, some 50 kilometers northeast
of Seoul, was the first land skirmish since November 27, 2001 when troops
briefly exchanged fire.
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- South Korean troops heightened vigilance along the border,
although North Korean troops undertook no unusual movements after South
Korea issued a loudspeaker warning, Lee said.
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- Thursday's shooting comes as Korean War veterans prepared
for a historic ceremony in the border truce village of Panmunjom marking
the 50th anniversary of the signing of the ceasefire on July 27, 1953 to
end the three-year war.
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- The armistice was signed between the US-led United Nations
Command, China and North Korea. South Korea is not a signatory to the accord,
which has left the two Koreas technically in a state of war.
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- Since the armistice was signed, the world's most heavily
fortified Cold War frontier has remained a dangerous military flashpoint,
manned by more than one million troops from both sides.
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- As the nuclear crisis deepens, US and South Korean officials
have voiced fears that a minor incident at the tense border could trigger
a chain of events leading to war.
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- South Korean warships twice fired warning shots last
month on North Korean fishing boats that violated the Northern Limit Line,
a de-facto sea border the North has never recognized.
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- A naval skirmish on June 29, 2002 left six South Korean
soldiers dead. In June 1999, a similar skirmish killed dozens of North
Korean sailors.
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- North Korea has ratcheted up the nuclear stand-off by
informing the United States last week that it had completed reprocessing
8,000 spent fuel rods to extract plutonium for nuclear weapons. Washington
has expressed "serious concern" over the claim.
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- US and South Korean officials say North Korea may have
one or two nuclear bombs and believe reprocessing the fuel rods would yield
enough plutonium for around six more.
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- An unnamed South Korean official told Yonhap news agency
Thursday that the United States, North Korea and China are likely to meet
for three-way talks as early as next month.
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- The three-party talks would then be enlarged to include
Japan and South Korea under a multilateral format proposed by the United
States, he said.
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- The plan was discussed when Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister
Dai Bingguo met North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il and other top officials
in Pyongyang July 12-15, he said.
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- In Washington, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said
he expected developments soon.
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- "The diplomatic track is alive and well and I expect
to see some developments along that track in the very near future,"
Powell said Wednesday after speaking by telephone with Chinese counterpart
Li Zhaoxing.
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