Kims urged to meet Roh

Press, 26 December 1987, Page 6

Kims urged to meet Roh

NZPA-Reuter Seoul South Korea’s ruling party has called on Opposition leaders to discuss ways of promoting "national harmony" with the president-elect, Roh Tae Woo. A Democratic Justice Party (DJP) statement said the Opposition rivals, Kim Young Sam and Kim Dae Jung, should meet Mr Roh as soon as possible. The two Kims, who together attracted 55 per cent of the total votes cast in the presidential poll last week, have accused the Government candidate, Mr Roh, of stealing the Election by widespread fraud, a charge which the ruling camp denies. Political analysts have said Mr Roh, who received 36.6 per cent of the vote, urgently needs to implement policies of national reconciliation to rule effectively. Officials from the two Opposition parties declined to comment on the DJP statement. Post-election violence has flared in several cities in the last seven days. On Tuesday night groups of students and dissidents protesting against alleged vote-rigging clashed with riot police in central Seoul, forcing Christmas shoppers to flee from tear gas and petrol bombs. But hundreds of students and dissidents ended a week-long sit-in protest against Mr Roh’s election at Seoul’s Myongdong Roman Catholic cathedral, a student

spokesman said. Mr Roh, the protege of President Chun Doo Hwan, has said his party will set up a Committee for Democratic ■ Reconciliation by the end of the year. One of the committee’s first tasks would be to work out ways of healing the scars left by the Army’s bloody repression of a 1980 civil uprising in Kwangju, the political - - c-

stronghold of Kim Dae Jung. In a conciliatory gesture towards the Opposition, the DJP announced that it was considering restoring Chung Sung Hwa, who last month joined Kim Young Sam’s Reunification Democratic Party, to his rank as a four-star general. Mr Chung had been reduced in rank and briefly jailed at the time President

Chun came to power in 1979. A DJP spokesman said he welcomed opposition parties’ statements that they would agree to hold talks with the ruling party on reforming Parliamentary election laws. The - law-reform talks are needed before elections can be held for the National Assembly, South

Korea’s Parliament. The DJP wants to hold the general elections before Mr Roh takes power on February 25, the day after Mr Chun’s sevenyear, indirectly-elected, term ends. Opposition groups, apparently needing more time to organise their splintered forces, want the polls in April.