he American-led United Nations Command (UNC) and North Korea ended their fourth round of talks Tuesday over the sinking of a South Korean warship but made no progress in arranging general-level talks, an official at the UNC said.
Colonel-level military officers from the two sides met for about two hours at the border village of Panmunjom, a day after the North's military fired a barrage of artillery shells near its western sea border with the South, straining already high tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
"During the Tuesday meeting, the two sides basically confirmed each side's stance, and a new date was not proposed for follow-up talks," said
the UNC official on condition of anonymity.
The colonel-level talks were designed to set up the date, agenda and protocols for general-level discussions on armistice issues related to the sinking of the Cheonan warship in March, in which 46 sailors were killed.
A team of multinational investigators concluded in May that North Korea torpedoed the Cheonan, but the North has denied any role in the sinking, denouncing the investigation results as a "sheer fabrication."
Soaring tensions between the two Korea further escalated this week after the North fired some 110 artillery shells Monday near their western sea
border, right after the South's military wrapped up five-day naval exercises in the area.
About 10 of the shells landed on the South's side of the Northern Limit Line, the volatile western sea border between the two Koreas, the South's military officials said.
On Tuesday, the South's military sent a message to the North Korean military, denouncing the artillery firing as a "grave provocative act" and warning it will "resolutely respond" if the North continues such provocations.
In return, North Korea repeated its threat of "war of retaliation."
Pyongyang "will clearly show to those buoyed by war fever what a real war is like any time it deems necessary through a war of retaliation of its own style based on its nuclear deterrent," the North's Rodong Sinmun said in a commentary carried by the Korean Central News Agency on Tuesday.
In previous meetings held from last month, the UNC and North Korea had made little progress toward the general-level talks as North Korea repeated its denial of responsibility for the ship sinking and renewed calls to send its own team of inspectors to the South to review the investigation results.
The UNC proposed a task force to jointly assess whether the sinking violated the armistice agreement that ended the 1950-53 Korean War.
The general-level talks have served as a measure to ease tensions on the divided peninsula since 1998.
The UNC, which monitors the Korean War armistice, is led by the top U.S. commander in the South. The U.S. stations some 28,500 troops in South Korea.