South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon, in Japan for a two-day visit, held three-hour talks with counterpart Yoriko Kawaguchi in Tokyo on the North Korean nuclear standoff.

"They confirmed their basic position that South Korean, Japan and the United States will continue to press on the principle of CVID -- that is complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement of the North Korean nuclear capability," a foreign ministry spokesman said.

The ministers also vowed to contact each other to work out an agenda for working group discussions that were agreed to at the second round of six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear arms program held last month in Beijing.

The group -- the two Koreas, Japan, the United States, China and Russia -- also agreed last month on the need for the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and to hold a third round of talks in Beijing by the end of June.

Ban, who arrived from Washington on his first visit to Japan as foreign minister, is expected to meet with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on Monday.

North Korea and the United States have been locked in the impasse since Washington accused the Stalinist state in October 2002 of a program to enrich uranium in defiance of a 1994 anti-nuclear pact.

North Korea has denied having an enriched uranium program but admits it has plutonium bombs.

Pyongyang has sought security guarantees and economic aid in return for denuclearization while Washington has said there must first be a verifiable dismantling of the Stalinist state's nuclear program.

Japan also insists on the resolution of the issue of the abduction of its citizens by North Korean spies in the 1970s and 1980s, a position that Ban said Seoul "fully supports", the official said.

WAR.WIRE