SEOUL, Nov 16: North Korea said Sunday it is ready to abandon its nuclear programme “in practice” if the United States scraps its hostile policy toward the communist country.

“As the DPRK (North Korea) declared more than once, it is ready to abandon in practice its nuclear programme which the US is concerned about at the phase where its hostile policy is fundamentally dropped and its threat to us removed in practice,” a North Korean foreign ministry spokesman said.

The statement carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency comes as diplomatic efforts intensify to bring North Korea to a new round of six-way talks aimed at ending the year-long nuclear crisis.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld arrived in Seoul Sunday for high-level talks that are expected to include the North Korean nuclear issue.

The North’s spokesman said the prospect of solving the crisis would depend on whether Washington “is ready to accept the proposal for a package solution based on the principle of simultaneous actions which commands the support and sympathy of all the participants of the talks.”

North Korea agreed in principle to attend a second round of talks during a meeting in Pyongyang between Chinese parliamentary leader Wu Bangguo and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il.

The Stalinist state had previously indicated it had no interest in further negotiations following an inconclusive first round of six-way talks in Beijing in August.

“We maintain the invariable stand to seek a negotiated peaceful solution to the nuclear issue between the DPRK and the US after advancing a proposal for a package solution ultimately aimed to denuclearize the Korean peninsula,” the North’s spokesman said.

“Only recently, we clarified the constructive stand that we are willing to take into consideration “written assurances of non-aggression” to which President Bush referred instead of the non-aggression treaty which the US finds it hard to accept,” he said.

Since the nuclear crisis erupted a year ago, North Korea has demanded a non-aggression pact with Washington. US President George W. Bush has refused this, but last month proposed a written guarantee instead of a formal treaty.

North Korea wants the United States to provide a security guarantee with economic aid, while Washington wants a complete and verifiable dismantling of Pyongyang’s nuclear programme.

The Washington Times, quoting North Korean diplomats in Geneva, said last week that Pyongyang is willing to give up its nuclear programme, allow annual inspections, and stop testing and exporting missiles, subject to certain guarantees.

The diplomats told the US daily that Pyongyang expected written security guarantees and compensation for economic losses incurred by closing two nuclear power plants.

South Korean officials have said a new round of six-nation talks would likely be held before the end of the year.

The talks, which Washington sees as the only way out of the crisis, also include China, Russia, South Korea, Japan and North Korea.

The crisis occurred in October last year when Washington said the North had admitted to running a secret uranium-enrichment programme in violation of a 1994 accord with the United States.—AFP