The message, he said, will be conveyed by the Unification Ministry to Pyongyang through the offices at Panmunjeom, the truce village on the border between the two countries. Seoul wants those preparatory meetings to start this week, officials said.

"The reply will include a list of delegates and a proposed schedule for the working-level talks," the Seoul official said Monday. "The working-level meetings will probably take place in the North's Mount Geumgang resort for three days beginning Thursday."

"We will try to schedule the inter-Korean minister level talks before the Aug. 15 Liberation Day holiday," the official said, "but the working-level negotiations will determine the date."

The ministerial talks would be the seventh round of such talks; they have been suspended since last November.

The South Korean delegation for the preparatory talks will be led by Rhee Bong-jo, assistant minister for unification policy at the Unification Ministry.

( July 30, 2002)