SEOUL, Dec 17: North Korea said on Tuesday it had struck a blow for peace on the Korean peninsula by completing de-mining work on its side of the heavily fortified border with South Korea.

Amid rising tension over Pyongyang’s declaration last week that it would revive a plutonium-producing programme that had been frozen under a 1994 accord, the North said the mine-clearing work would benefit peace and stability throughout the world.

The work’s completion brought North and South Korean a step closer to finalizing a landmark project to open cross-border rail and road links severed for half a century.

The mine-clearing in the demilitarized zone (DMZ), which divides the Korean peninsula, was completed on December 14, according to North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), monitored here.

The South’s defence ministry said previously it had completed de-mining work on the southern side of the border on the same day.

The work paves the way for the two Koreas to push ahead with the railway project which will open “a bright prospect of boosting inter-Korean cooperation, exchange, reconciliation and unity,” KCNA said.

Both sides have agreed to open two cross-border transportation corridors — one to run up to Russia on the eastern edge of the DMZ and the second to China on the western side.

Troops on both sides of the heavily militarized border have cleared mines for the past three months from two DMZ corridors to be used for road and rail links cut since the 1950-53 Korean War.

One corridor through the east side of the border was declared free of mines on December 3, and the two Koreas hope to hold a gala ceremony to celebrate the completion of their work in the western side of the four-kilometre-wide zone.

KCNA said the railway project would help achieve “peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region and the rest of the world and the common prosperity of humankind.”

It would also be “greatly conducive to boosting economic ties and cooperation” not only between North Korea and Russia but also among other countries in Northeast Asia and Europe, the agency said.

“The inter-Korean railway project is of great international significance as it will be linked to the trans-Siberian railroad in Russia in the future,” it said.

In another sign of progress in inter-Korean relations, negotiators from both Koreas agreed Tuesday to arrange more reunions of families who have been separated by more than five decades of hostility on the Korean peninsula during their latest peace talks.

The accord was reached at one of two sets of inter-Korean rapprochement talks taking place at North Korea’s Mount Kumgang resort amid rising tension over Pyongyang’s mothballed nuclear programme.

Negotiators agreed to allow 200 people — 100 each from North and South Korea — to meet long-lost relatives at Mount Kumgang around the lunar New Year holiday which falls on February 1, according to South Korean pooled media reports from Kumgang.—AFP