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SEOUL: North Korea offered during talks with the United States last week to freeze operations at one nuclear reactor in exchange for aid, a report said Monday.
Chosun Ilbo, South Korea's largest-circulation paper, quoted sources as saying the North offered to suspend operations at its Yongbyon reactor and allow on-site monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency as the first steps towards abandoning its nuclear programme.
North Korea's senior nuclear negotiator Kim Kye-Gwan made the offer in exchange for US energy and economic aid and assurances that Washington would work to unfreeze 24 million dollars of the North's assets in a Macau bank, the paper said.
Kim met his US counterpart Christopher Hill three times in Berlin last week for talks which both sides described as positive.
Hill, who flew to South Korea, Japan and China after his Berlin discussions, said in Beijing on Monday that six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear programme should resume as soon as possible.
The talks, which group the two Koreas with China, Japan, Russia and the United States, have been going on since 2003 but assumed added urgency after the North staged its first nuclear weapons test last October.
The last round of negotiations in December ended with little apparent progress, with Pyongyang demanding that the US financial curbs be lifted before any further discussions.
Hill said the US Treasury Department would resume separate bilateral talks with North Korea soon on Macau's Banco Delta Asia.
Chosun Ilbo quoted other sources as saying the North demanded that Washington consider transforming the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War into a peace treaty as soon as it starts implementing the initial measures, and the US gave a positive response.
The North's official media said last week the Berlin talks resulted in an unspecified agreement. Hill denied any deal had been reached but described the meetings as “very useful.”
