N Korea offers 'road map' for freezing nukes

The United States rejected the offer, saying the communist state must first come up with a detailed plan for a freeze ahead of eventual nuclear dismantlement, the news agency quoted a South Korean official as saying.

North and South Korea, the United States, Japan, Russia and China began working-level talks yesterday to lay the foundation for a third round of complex discussions on the North Korean nuclear crisis.

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Officials from several parties involved have cautioned that scant progress can be expected at the senior-level talks, to be held in Beijing from Wednesday to Saturday, aimed at ending a 20-month standoff between the United States and North Korea over its nuclear ambitions.

"The sides outlined their basic positions with regard to nuclear dismantlement and 'freeze-versus-countermeasures' and there were discussions on these," Yonhap quoted Yang Seok-hwan, a South Korean Foreign Ministry official, as saying, citing his country's negotiators at the talks.

North Korea has demanded the United States agree to its "freeze-for-compensation" proposal as a first-stage measure to end the dispute.

China proposed putting off the opening of the main talks by one day so that the countries could hold a series of bilateral meetings on Wednesday, Yonhap said.

But Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing appeared upbeat.

"I hope we will make progress. We hope the peninsula will be nuclear-free and enjoy peace and stability," Li told reporters on the sidelines of an Asian diplomatic forum in Qingdao city.

The talks should be held in a "pragmatic, relaxed atmosphere," he said.

The crisis erupted in October 2002, when US officials said North Korea had disclosed it was working on a secret program to enrich uranium for weapons, in violation of an international agreement.

North Korea denies it had a uranium enrichment program, but in early 2003 it threw out UN nuclear inspectors, withdrew from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and restarted a mothballed nuclear reactor from which weapons-grade plutonium can be extracted.