Military officers from North Korea and the U.S.-led United Nations Command held their third round of talks Friday on the deadly sinking of a South Korean warship that was blamed on the North. Colonels from the two sides met at the border truce village of Panmunjom for two hours to try to arrange a higher-level meeting on the issue. They agreed to meet again on August 9, a U.N. Command spokesman said, without elaborating. Cross-border tensions have risen sharply since South Korea and the United States accused the North in late May of torpedoing the ship near the disputed inter-Korean border with the loss of 46 lives. North Korea strongly denies any role in sinking the Cheonan ship in March and has demanded to send a high-level team to South Korea to inspect evidence dragged from the seabed, including what the South says is part of a North Korean torpedo. The U.N. Command-which oversees an armistice that ended the 1950 to 1953 Korean War-proposed last week that a joint task force be formed to discuss the "armistice violations."
