North Korean leader Kim Jong Il rejected a proposal by South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun at their summit this week to discuss a withdrawal of troups from their heavily fortified border, DPA quoted Seoul's defence minister as saying. "The issue was off the table as Chairman Kim Jong Il said it was still premature to have it discussed," said Kim Jang Soo, who accompanied Roh to the summit in Pyongyang and became the first South Korean defence minister to visit the North. Despite signing a wide-ranging joint statement with Roh at the end of the three-day summit Thursday that was aimed at reconciliation between their two countries, Kim Jong Il wanted to take only gradual steps toward disarmament, the minister was quoted as saying by the South Korean news agency Yonhap. Roh was seeking discussions on the removal of the more than 1 million soldiers and weapons along their 243-kilometre-long border. At the end of the second summit in the two Koreas history, Roh and Kim Jong Il agreed to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula, end military hostility and establish a permanent peace treaty. The two countries are still formally at war after the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice and not a peace treaty.
