The US wants other nations to join it in a multilateral security deal with North Korea that it hopes will satisfy the Stalinist state's demands for a formal non-aggression pact, Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Friday.
"It would be something that would be public, something that would be written, something that I hope would be multilateral," he said in an interview with news agency reporters.
Conclusion of an agreement would be part of a package in which North Korea would have to agree to verifiably abandon its nuclear weapons development and destroy those it already has, he said.
"It wouldn't be the verification regime that will be necessary to ensure North Korean compliance," Powell said. "That will have to be something separate."
Powell said his staff was drafting sample agreements based on what he called historical "models" of similar deals that he hoped would be acceptable to Pyongyang and ease the impasse over its nuclear weapons programs.
He said the US would soon begin to share the language of the draft agreements with friends and allies with the expectation that they would agree to join Washington in pledging not to attack North Korea.
The idea is not entirely new as at least Australia and Russia suggested a similar concept earlier this year but until Friday, the US had balked at it.
Now, though, Washington hopes the prospect of such an agreement will entice North Korea to return to the Beijing-hosted "six-party talks" between China, Japan, the US, Russia and South Korea, Powell said.
"We have been examining what one could present to them that would give them more of an assurance than the kind of assurances they received in the previous administration which were essentially letters and statements," Powell said.
"There are many models from our history of how one can do this and we have been examining different models and so we have some ideas as to how we can proceed in this regard," he said.
"In the weeks immediately ahead we'll start to explore these ideas with our friends," Powell said without identifying the countries to which he was referring.
Earlier, he had told reporters that Washington had been "in contact with the North Koreans through different channels and we have some ideas with respect to security assurances that we will be presenting in due course."
In the interview Powell was coy when asked to elaborate about past models on which a new North Korea agreement could be based on.
"My folks have come up with models that span an 80-year period," Powell said, adding that some had involved the US and others had not.
"Some are US, some are foreign," he said.
"Some of our allies have done some marvelous work with agreements of this kind.
"There are some interesting agreements that have dealt with complex problems where people needed assurances, where they needed something that was formal but wasn't a treaty," Powell said.
North Korea has repeatedly demanded a formal non-aggression treaty or agreement with the US in return for negotiating an end to its nuclear weapons program.
Washington, which insists it has no plans to attack or invade North Korea, has rejected a formal pact but has for months said it is willing to sign something that is equally binding but less than an actual treaty.
As recently as Tuesday, Pyongyang lashed out at that idea, dismissing the offer as an "empty piece of paper" and saying it would step up its nuclear weapons program as a result.
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