China offered yesterday to host talks between the US and North Korea over their nuclear standoff and Russia said it planned to send a top official to key capitals to help find a diplomatic solution.
As international efforts to defuse the crisis speeded up, an Australian delegation flew to Pyongyang to discuss possible steps while senior US envoy James Kelly arrived in the Chinese capital after talks in Seoul with South Korean leaders.
Earlier, North Korea reiterated a demand for bilateral talks with the US, a statement that appeared to hint that it, too, was looking to defuse the crisis after weeks of fiery anti-American rhetoric. Washington accuses Pyongyang of covertly developing nuclear weapons, a charge it denies.
"If the relevant sides are willing to hold dialogue in Beijing, I think we would have no difficulties with that," foreign ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue told reporters.
"We hope the United States and North Korea can resume dialogue swiftly because we think that talks are the most effective channel for resolving this problem," she said.
China, Pyongyang's closest ally, has taken a relatively balanced approach to the nuclear dilemma, calling on the US and North Korea to talk their way through the problem and keeping in regular contact with all the sides.
Meanwhile, Russia's defense minister said President Vladimir Putin planned to send a special envoy to Pyongyang, Beijing and Washington.
"In the last few days certain hopeful steps and statements have emerged which I would say look to return the situation to what it was before the current crisis," Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said.
He said the man Putin was sending was Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov, one of the ministry's top Asian experts.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell told The Wall Street Journal in an interview that if the North agreed to abandon its nuclear ambitions, Washington still would need "a new arrangement" that would better constrain Pyongyang's ability to produce nuclear weapons.
His words appeared to support hints that Washington may be softening its position on the standoff since Pyongyang last month threw out UN inspectors and effectively scrapped the 1994 Agreed Framework under which it had frozen development of materials for nuclear arms.
While that pact halted production of fissile material, it "left intact the capacity for production," the Journal quoted Powell as saying. "I think, therefore, that we need a new arrangement and not just go back to the existing framework."
Senior Australian diplomats passed through Beijing en route to North Korea looking for a solution to the nuclear impasse.
"The purpose of our visit is, of course, to express our strong views regarding recent developments on the nuclear issue in North Korea," said foreign ministry official Murray McLean.
Australia is one of the few Western countries to have diplomatic relations with the North.
Another visitor to Pyongyang was a UN special envoy seeking to assess humanitarian conditions in the impoverished nation a day after Washington said it had suspended food aid.
Envoy Maurice Strong told reporters during a stopover in Beijing: "The [food] pipeline is drying up and unless new humanitarian supplies start to move quickly, there could be a significant crisis in March or April."
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