Korean talks end with little progress

The North wants talks with the US on the nuclear issue

A South Korean envoy has returned from North Korea without holding talks with the North's reclusive leader Kim Jong-il.

South Korean presidential envoy Lim Dong-won, arriving back in Seoul, said his North Korean hosts told him Mr Kim was on a regional tour.

This dashed hopes that the South Korean delegation could help resolve a nuclear crisis over North Korea's withdrawal this month from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Kim Jong-il appears to have snubbed the South Koreans

The solution to the dispute would be a "very long and gradual process," Mr Lim told reporters.

But Mr Lim said the two sides had made progress on the issue of cross-border links. He said a railway linking North and South should now be completed by March.

On Wednesday, North Korea repeated its call for direct talks and a non-aggression pact with the United States.

"It is the only way of most fairly solving the 'nuclear issue' on the Korean peninsula for the DPRK (North Korea) and the US to have direct talks on an equal footing," the official Korean Central News Agency reported.

The statement made no mention of US President George Bush's annual State of the Union address, in which he said Pyongyang was an "oppressive regime" that "rules a people living in fear and starvation".

Mr Bush said the US would not be "blackmailed" into making concessions to North Korea because of its reported nuclear weapons development.

Deadlock

South Korea has urged Washington to open a dialogue with North Korea.

CRISIS CHRONOLOGY

16 Oct: N Korea acknowledges secret nuclear programme, US says

14 Nov: Oil shipments to N Korea halted

22 Dec: N Korea removes monitoring devices at Yongbyon nuclear plant

31 Dec: UN nuclear inspectors forced to leave North Korea

10 Jan: N Korea pulls out of anti-nuclear treaty

11 Jan: Pyongyang suggests it could resume ballistic missile tests

24 Jan: North-South talks end without making progress

Timeline of tensions

"The fundamental solution of the nuclear issue can be achieved only when the country suspected of building nuclear weapons doesn't feel any security threats and builds relationships of trust with other countries," Mr Lim told reporters

"North Korean officials repeated that the nuclear issue is a matter that concerns North Korea and the United States," he said.

Mr Lim delivered a letter from South Korea's outgoing-President Kim Dae-jung to the North Korean leader's aides.

Mr Lim was assured the letter would be studied.

The diplomatic crisis started last October, when the US said North Korea had admitted it was working on a banned nuclear weapons programme.

The US stopped fuel aid to North Korea in protest, and that led to North Korea expelling United Nations weapons inspectors and announcing it was reactivating a previous nuclear programme.