Excerpts from the 01 October Department of State Daily Press Briefing on the inter-Korea summit and humanitarian support. Deputy Spokesman Tom Casey is responding to questions:

QUESTION: On inter-Korea summit talks. President — South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun told today that, before departing for Pyongyang, quote, “once discussions on a peace regime get under way in earnest, we can take up building military confidence and a peace treaty and furthermore the issue of arms reduction.” Can you comment on that?

MR. CASEY: Well, I haven’t seen his remarks. Again, as you know, the United States has always been supportive of North-South dialogue. These are matters for the two Koreas to discuss and work out. In terms of denuclearization and the things that come with denuclearization, I’ll just point you right back to what Chris has said before, which is with denuclearization, all things are possible and North Korea can achieve a very different relationship with the United States as well as with the rest of the world. But I certainly am not looking for those inter-Korean discussions to change the basic facts on the ground or the six-party talks. And as you know, some of the issues that you’re referring to are ones that are being dealt with as part of that process.

Yeah. You have a follow-up?

QUESTION: On (inaudible) thing. I honestly believe that the two Korean leaders agreed to — would agree to some bilateral arrangement for economic aid plan. Are they — are these steps in line with the action-for-action spirit, spelled out in the six-party talks?

MR. CASEY: Well, again, I’ll leave it to the two Korean leaders to talk about their meeting for — obviously not a participant in that. In the past, particularly in terms of food aid, the Government of South Korea has provided support to the Government of North Korea. We of course, for a long time were the world’s leading donor of food assistance to North Korea. So certainly we think things that address people’s humanitarian concerns or needs are important. They need to be outside the political process.

So I don’t — I can’t really speculate for you on what kinds of things they’d conclude. But certainly in terms of humanitarian support, we’ve always said that that’s something that needs to be handled outside the terms of other political considerations, including the six-party talks.