South Korea on Wednesday proposed a date to North Korea for the first official contact since the North's deadly shelling of a South Korean island late last year. The proposal for a meeting in two weeks on resuming high-level military talks came as a senior U.S. diplomat visited Seoul to show solidarity with a close American ally and to talk about North Korea.. South Korea's defense minister sent a message to his North Korean counterpart proposing a Feb. 11 meeting in the Demilitarized Zone dividing the peninsula, the Defense Ministry said. Also Wednesday, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg held talks with Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan, telling reporters afterward that the allies' ties were as close as «sticky rice cake.» Steinberg called on the North to demonstrate that it's sincerely prepared to reject violence and to engage in meaningful dialogue on its nuclear programs, the Associated Press reported.
