SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – South Korea pressed communist North Korea to redouble its reconciliation efforts Tuesday, as the estranged neighbors opened high-level talks amid rifts over the North’s nuclear program and the South’s delayed rice shipments.

The Cabinet-level meetings in Seoul come after a historic cross-border test train run on tracks restored earlier this month – the first time trains crossed the heavily armed border since rail links were cut early in the 1950-53 Korean War.

South Korea hopes to win the North’s consent to formally reopen cross-border rail service. But the talks could easily plunge into stalemate over North Korea’s refusal to start dismantling its nuclear programs and the South’s refusal to ship promised rice to the impoverished North.

North Korea scuttled similar talks last year after South Korea snubbed an earlier demand for rice shipments, citing concerns about the North’s missile tests in July 2006. Since then, North Korea has tested its first atomic bomb and is accused of stonewalling on pledges to start dismantling its nuclear programs.

While welcoming the North Korean delegation to Seoul, South Korea’s Unification Minister Lee Jae-joung urged his counterparts to use the recent train test run as a springboard for improved ties.

“That experience is a victory that was jointly achieved by both North and South Korea,” Lee Jae-joung said. “Just as a train moves ahead, I think we should make efforts to ensure our talks move forward and never retreat.”

One sticking point remains North Korea’s promise in February to shut down its Yongbyon nuclear reactor in exchange for energy aid and political concessions, a pledge the North has yet to honor.

The South, meanwhile, is delaying about 400,000 tons of rice shipments promised to its neighbor in talks last month. The aid delivery was set to start in late May.

Earlier, Mr. Lee attributed the delay to “various reasons related to peace on the Korean peninsula,” including fulfillment of the February nuclear agreement. But he said he did not believe North Korea’s delegation chief, Kwon Ho Ung, would protest, Yonhap news agency reported.

North Korean media have criticized the South for trying to link food aid to the nuclear standoff.

South Korean protesters rallied outside the site of the talks Tuesday to demand all aid be stopped, holding a sign that read “Down with Kim Jong Il.” Police broke up the small crowd before the North Korean delegates arrived.

At evening dinner banquet, Mr. Kwon, North Korea’s senior cabinet councilor, said he hoped the talks would be meaningful and productive. While the two Koreas focus on their shared interests, he said, relations “will not freeze but move ahead.”

North Korea has been refusing to shut down its reactor until it receives funds from an account at a bank in the Chinese territory of Macau that was frozen when America blacklisted the bank in 2005.

North Korea’s $25 million at Macau’s Banco Delta Asia was freed earlier this year, but the government in Pyongyang has not withdrawn the money, apparently seeking to receive it through a bank wire transfer to prove the funds are now clean. America had alleged the funds were tied to money laundering and counterfeiting.

The chief American negotiator to North Korean nuclear talks arrived in China on Wednesday to discuss new ways to resolve the long-running banking dispute. Any breakthrough could help smooth inter-Korean talks in Seoul. Christopher Hill did not make any remarks on arrival, according to AP Television News.

Mr. Hill earlier told reporters Indonesia the process would be “helped immeasurably” if North Korea began dismantling its nuclear reactor as agreed to in February with the United States and four other countries.

“What the DPRK needs to do now is get moving on denuclearization,” Hill said, using the abbreviation of the country’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. He added that he could not predict when the dispute was “going to be resolved.

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Associated Press Writer Bo-mi Lim in Incheon, South Korea, and Chris Brummitt in Jakarta, Indonesia, contributed to this report.