North Korea has pulled out of inter-Korean talks planned for this week because of the impeachment of Roh Moo-hyun, South Korea’s president, raising fears that the political crisis in Seoul could stall diplomatic efforts to end the communist state’s nuclear weapons programme. Pyongyang said the political situation in South Korea was too “unstable” for its officials to visit the country for routine trade talks scheduled to start yesterday. Analysts expressed concern that North Korea could use the same excuse to delay further six-party talks about its nuclear activities. China, the US, Japan, Russia and the two Koreas provisionally agreed to meet again before July after last month’s talks in Beijing made little progress. A permanent working group was supposed to be set up in the next few weeks to explore possible solutions to the nuclear dispute. Full Story