ABUJA, Jan 28: North Korea has offered Nigeria missile technology but Abuja has not taken them up on the offer, a spokesman said on Wednesday, clarifying an earlier statement that the African country was seeking such weapons.

In Washington, a states department spokesman cautioned Nigeria against dealing with North Korea. The State Department said it had seen reports of the episode, but also noted Nigeria's hints that it had no interest in buying ballistic technology from Pyongyang.

In Abuja, a spokesman for Nigeria's Vice-President Atiku Abubakar said that the subject of arms sales had come up at meeting in Abuja on Tuesday between Atiku and his North Korean counterpart, Yang Hyong-Sop.

Spokesman Onu Kaba Ojo - who had earlier said that Atiku had met the North Korean delegation to discuss buying missiles - said that he had since discussed the matter with Nigerian defence officials and found that the suggestion had come from North Korea.

"They came to us wanting a memorandum of understanding signed with us towards developing missile technology and training and manufacture of ammunition. They were just trying to get us interested," Ojo said.

"There hasn't been any interest shown on our side. We're not interested, but we didn't tell them that in that way," he said. Any move by Nigeria to buy ballistic missile technology from Kim Il-Jong's regime would be likely to anger the United States, which is locked in a diplomatic stand-off with Pyongyang over the latter's arms exports and quest for nuclear weapons.-AFP