North Korea seeks aid amid diplomacy on nuclear arms

SEOUL, Mar 1 (Reuters) North Korea is seeking humanitarian aid at talks with the South, an official said today signalling Pyongyang was trying to cash in on a reduction of tensions on the Korean peninsula.

The communist state's second-ranking leader reaffirmed his country's commitment to dismantle its nuclear programme and pledged efforts to implement it, another official said, briefing on a special meeting given to visiting South Korean delegates.

South Korea has said the resumption of full-scale bilateral humanitarian aid depends on the North keeping to an agreement to begin dismantling its nuclear programme.

At the first high-level meeting between the two Koreas since the North's nuclear test in October, officials from both sides pored over how and when to resume commercial projects and family reunions stalled since last year.

The Korea talks are part of the most intense multinational diplomacy focused on the North since the start of the Bush administration in the United States and since a defunct 1994 North Korea nuclear deal.

''President Kim Yong-nam said the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula was late President Kim Il-sung's last guidance and they would make efforts to turn it into reality,'' a South Korean official involved in the talks said today.

Kim Il-sung is North Korea's founder who died in 1994. His son Kim Jong-il now runs the country as chairman of the National Defence Commission and general secretary of the Workers' Party.

Kim Yong-nam is the official head of state as president of parliament's executive council.

''(Unification) Minister Lee Jae-joung said strongly that it was very important to conscientiously implement the initial steps for the dismantlement of the North's nuclear programmes by soundly complying with the February 13 agreement,'' the official told reporters in Pyongyang.

Delegates in the inter-Korea talks were now working to hammer out a joint communique expected to focus on resuming humanitarian projects and expanding commercial ties.

''The North side started raising the issue of humanitarian aid at the working-level contact on February 28,'' another South Korean official involved in the talks told reporters.

It was not clear what kind of aid the North wants, he added.

South Korea had been a major donor of food and fertiliser to the impoverished North until shipments were halted in July after North Korea launched a series of missiles that month.

The inter-Korean talks were suspended in the wake of those tests.

DIPLOMATIC FLURRY As officials take up the question of aid and humanitarian work in Pyongyang, diplomats from countries involved in the six-way nuclear talks on Pyongyang's nuclear programme are set to resume discussions on implementing the February 13 deal.

North Korea and Japan were set to begin talks in Hanoi next week on normalising ties and North Korean envoy Kim Kye-gwan is due in Washington to discuss normalising ties with the United States next week, all under the February 13 agreement.

North Korea has said that improving ties with Japan and the United States was a key prerequisite to dismantling its nuclear arms programme, which it says was for self-defence.

Discussions about what North Korea would do to suspend its nuclear activities in return for fuel oil shipment from the other parties are also expected in the coming weeks.

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