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N Korea announces new talks

North Korea announced yesterday it would resume talks in Beijing on Feb. 25 with the US, China and neighboring countries seeking to resolve a crisis over Pyongyang's nuclear-arms ambitions.

The date for a second round of talks was given after months of intensive shuttle diplomacy since the first six-party session in August. The talks also include Russia, Japan and South Korea.

"The DPRK and the US, the major parties concerned to the six-way talks, and China, the host country, agreed to resume the next round of the six-way talks from Feb. 25 after having a series of discussions," said the official KCNA news agency.

DPRK stands for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, North Korea's official name.

The announcement came a day after Pakistani officials said the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb had confessed to selling nuclear secrets to North Korea along with Libya and Iran.

China confirmed the date of the talks.

South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-hyuck told a news conference: "We expect the talks to last three days, but it's open-ended."

Lee, who headed the South Korean delegation at the August talks, said the five parties excluding North Korea expected this month's session could produce a "working group able to discuss the substantive and technical issues".

"There is a recognition of the need for such a working group. Whether North Korea will accept that is difficult to say, considering how sensitive North Korea's position can be," he said.

The US wants North Korea to commit -- at least by the end of the next round -- to dismantling any nuclear-arms programs. Washington has offered then to lay out in detail how it could guarantee not to attack the state US President George W. Bush called part of an "axis of evil" with Iran and pre-war Iraq.

North Korea has offered to freeze its nuclear activities in exchange for energy aid and diplomatic recognition from the US as the first step in resolving the dispute.

The crisis erupted in October 2002 when US officials, including chief North Korea negotiator James Kelly, reported that North Korean officials had admitted at a meeting with them that Pyongyang was pursuing a clandestine nuclear-weapons program.

North Korea has since denied the US account but Kelly reiterated last month there had been no ambiguity at the meeting.

Other officials have said the US case is based on the intelligence that prompted the North's initial admission.

US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said in Tokyo on Monday that the stalemate over North Korea's nuclear-arms program was a "dangerous and unstable situation."

The talks announcement came just before a delegation of North Korean officials arrived in Seoul for separate cabinet-level talks with South Korea.

South Korean officials have said they intend to use the 13th round of inter-Korean ministerial talks since 2000 to urge North Korea to resolve the nuclear dispute, which has been an impediment to deeper economic exchanges seen as vital to reviving the North's struggling economy.
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