N. Korea agrees in principle to November nuclear talks

North Korea has agreed in principle to hold another round of talks in Beijing in early November to discuss its nuclear weapons programme, Japan's Kyodo news agency said yesterday, quoting diplomatic sources in Moscow.

During discussions in Beijing in August, North Korea, South Korea, the United States, Russia, Japan and China agreed that tensions over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions should be defused peacefully, but no date was set for another round of talks.

A senior US official said in Washington on Wednesday that the next round might not take place until November, slightly later than initially expected.

Pyongyang's official news agency said separately yesterday that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, who rarely meets foreign visitors, had held talks "in a cordial atmosphere" with Russian presidential envoy Konstantin Pulikovsky on the September 9 anniversary of the founding of North Korea.

"The (Russian) presidential envoy came here with a personal letter of Russian president," the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

The diplomatic sources in Moscow said the letter from Russian President Vladimir Putin urged Kim to abide by the agreement in Beijing and not take steps that could aggravate the situation, such as declaring North Korea had nuclear arms, Kyodo reported.

North Korea celebrated the 55th anniversary of its founding with a huge parade but put no military hardware on display despite speculation it would showcase a new missile.

The United States wants the North agree to a verifiable and irreversible end to its nuclear programmes, including production of highly enriched uranium for nuclear fuel and plutonium.

US officials in Washington said on Thursday North Korea appeared to have halted work at its Yongbyon nuclear complex, centre of efforts to produce plutonium for atomic weapons.

The officials said they did not know the reason, but said the possibilities included that Pyongyang had done this as a gesture to encourage negotiations with Washington, that it had run into technical difficulties, or, more ominously, that it had finished reprocessing fuel needed for a half dozen or more nuclear bombs.

"There's not much going on," one US official said when asked about current activity at Yongbyon.