SEOUL, May 7: North Korea's military agreed on Friday to hold its highest-level talks in decades with senior officers of the South's armed forces to help ease tension along the world's most heavily fortified frontier, officials said.

South Korean officials tried to nail down a firm date for the talks, which would be between generals, before leaving Pyongyang after three days of minister-level talks.

The chief North Korean delegate had sounded encouraging but did not go to far as to give a date, South Korean Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun told reporters on returning to Seoul.

"You won't have to wait for long," Jeong quoted his counterpart, Kwon Ho-ung, as saying at an unscheduled 10-minute meeting after the official end of the talks.

The North would contact South Korea next week to finalise the date for the most senior uniformed encounter between the two Koreas since the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce, he said. -Reuters