29 March 2004	Monday	07 Safar 1425

BEIJING, March 28: South Korea's foreign minister will seek to find out more about North Korea's stand on six-party nuclear talks in discussions with his Chinese counterpart during a three-day visit that began on Sunday.

Ban Ki-moon is scheduled to meet Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing, who met North Korean leader Kim Jong-il last week on a Pyongyang trip the Chinese Foreign ministry trumpeted as a success.

"I expect to find out North Korea's position on the six-party talks since Minister Li Zhaoxing has visited the North and met with Chairman Kim Jong-il last week," South Korean cable news network YTN quoted Ban as saying before his departure from Seoul.

China hosted the two Koreas, the United States, Japan and Russia last month for a second round of talks aimed at dismantling the North's nuclear programmes. Ban had told a news briefing last week that he would try to have the third round of the talks and working-level discussions take place before the end of June as pledged by the six countries in the second round of talks.

The nuclear standoff began when the United States said in October 2002 that North Koreans had admitted to operating a secret nuclear programme. Little progress has been made in the two rounds of six-party talks.

North Korea, in a radio report on Saturday, rejected the US condition that Pyongyang implement a complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling of its nuclear programmes, saying it was a ploy to disarm and stifle the North.

The report said the North's solution to the nuclear problem continued to be "dialogue, a peaceful process and simultaneous actions". Ban said before his departure on Sunday that he would also ask the Chinese to allow passage of North Korean refugees in China to the South.

A group of North Korean refugees were reported to be staging a hunger strike in a detention camp in northeastern China, and South Korea has made a strong plea that they are not repatriated. -Reuters