http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/09/world/09WIRE-KORE.html?searchpv=nytToday

SEOUL, South Korea -- Raising hopes that inter-Korean reconciliation will resume, a top U.S. official said Wednesday that Washington expects to resume talks with North Korea after ending a review of its policy toward the North in the next few weeks.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage also delivered a letter from President Bush to his South Korean counterpart, Kim Dae-jung, that professed U.S. support for Seoul's policy of engaging North Korea.

The prospect of a break in the impasse between the United States and the communist North was a relief to South Korea, which has struggled for months to revive stalled reconciliation projects on the divided Korean peninsula.

"At the moment, we are not talking with North Korea on anything, but I suspect that we will in the near future," Armitage said after meeting Kim and Foreign Minister Han Seung-soo separately.

U.S.-North Korean tension prompted Pyongyang to cut off most government contacts with Seoul, jeopardizing rapprochement that began with an unprecedented inter-Korean summit a year ago.

At a meeting in Washington in March, Bush told Kim that he was skeptical of the North and would suspend talks on curbing its missile program pending a policy review.

Bush's letter to Kim said U.S. policy toward the North would "reflect Kim's opinions as much as possible," according to the Blue House, the presidential office.

Kim said he was grateful to Bush for advising him of U.S. plans for a missile defense system.

The Seoul government fears the system could jeopardize ties with North Korea.

About 30 South Korean opponents of U.S. missile defense protested at Incheon International Airport, but police kept the demonstrators away from Armitage and his entourage.

"The aim of their visit is to twist South Korea's arm to get it to be involved in the U.S. missile defense system," the Korean Federation for the Environmental Movement, a civic group that organized the protest, said in a statement.

Another group of 100 anti-U.S. protesters, mostly students, marched in downtown Seoul. They carried a banner that read: "U.S. Diabolic Nightmare" and handed out leaflets saying: "Armitage, envoy of death."

The United States envisions missile defense as a means of thwarting any attack by countries such as North Korea and Iraq.

Russia and China have criticized the project, which would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Bush has said the treaty is a relic of the Cold War.

On Tuesday, Rodong Sinmun, the newspaper of North Korea's ruling Workers Party, denounced U.S. warnings about the threat from the North's long-range missile program. It said Washington was "the most dangerous nuclear and missile maniac."

Last week, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il told a European Union delegation that he would maintain a moratorium on missile tests until 2003. But he said he would sell missile technology to anyone who would buy it.