SEOUL, Jan 13: A top US envoy kicked off a week of intense diplomacy on Monday with a call for North Korea to scrap its nuclear weapons drive as Pyongyang repeated its denial of having such a programme.

In what may represent a softening in Washington’s hardline on Pyongyang, the man who launched the nuclear standoff three months ago said North Korea could gain a reward if it backed down now.

“Once we can get beyond nuclear weapons, there may be opportunities with the US, with private investors and other countries, to help North Korea in the energy area,” said James Kelly, the senior Bush administration official for Asia.

But North Korea again stated that allegations by the United States that it had admitted to developing nuclear weapons were untrue.

The country’s ambassador to Moscow, Pak Ui Chun, on Monday rejected US allegations that Pyongyang had a secret nuclear weapons development programme, telling Russian reporters that the allegations by Kelly were “hypothetical.”

Kelly, opening a five-nation tour of Asia in Seoul, was the Bush envoy who confronted North Korea with evidence on a visit to Pyongyang in October that it was pursuing a scheme to use highly enriched uranium to produce nuclear weapons.

He said the North admitted it had been caught red-handed violating an eight-year-old arms control accord, sparking a nuclear confrontation that has led to unfreezing a plutonium-producing nuclear programme mothballed under the a 1994 agreement.

Kelly, who leaves here on Tuesday for China, and then visits Singapore, Indonesia and Japan, appeared to signal that Washington was ready to shift its hardline stance.

Washington has reiterated throughout the standoff that it is unwilling to reward bad behaviour by negotiating with the regime on its demands for a non-aggression pact and other benefits before Pyongyang agrees to scrap its nuclear ambitions.

It has also ruled out offering inducements for Pyongyang’s “immediate and verifiable” dismantling of its nuclear programme.

But the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN agency which had its monitors expelled from North Korea last month, said on Monday that Pyongyang needed to see the possible benefits of compliance.

“There are certain steps that North Korea has to take first to come into compliance with its international obligations,” IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei told reporters following talks with French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin in Paris.

“But also it is important for the international community to articulate what North Korea could expect in return for its good behaviour as a law-abiding member of the international community,” the IAEA chief added.

Kelly’s comments to journalists here came during a round of diplomacy that included talks with South Korean Foreign Minister Choi Sung-Hong and president-elect Roh Moo-Hyun.

According to Roh’s spokesman, Lee Nak-Yon, quoted in the Korean media, Kelly told the president-elect Washington was ready for talks with Pyongyang on a wide-range of issues.

Washington has been under pressure to ease its position on North Korea following Pyongyang’s rapid escalation of the nuclear crisis in recent weeks.

Since last month North Korea has begun to reactivate its mothballed Yongbyon nuclear plant, expelled UN monitors and withdrawn from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Now the unpredictable government says it may restart its long-range missile tests, suspended since 1998.

Pyongyang says it has been forced to reactivate its frozen nuclear plant by Washington’s decision to suspend fuel aid in November to punish the energy-starved nation for running a clandestine nuclear programme.

Washington’s hard line has placed it at odds with Seoul and with president-elect Roh, a firm backer of President Kim Dae-Jung’s “sunshine” policy of engagement with the communist North.

While Kelly was in meetings, President Kim nudged a reluctant Washington towards face-to-face dialogue with Pyongyang.

“We have to talk to North Korea, and Japan also has to. But it is important to let a US-North Korean dialogue open,” he said during a meeting with former Japanese prime minister Yoshiro Mori.—AFP