Libya, long considered a 'rogue' state by Washington, established diplomatic relations with the United States last month after renouncing its quest for weapons of mass destruction.

"We had some success in the area in the case of Libya renouncing its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction," said US envoy John Bolton ahead of a meeting with South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon.

"(As) we prepare for the next round of six-party talks, it's important to keep those lessons in mind."

The US under secretary of state for arms control and international security arrived in Seoul Monday on a four-day visit and reinforced the message delivered here earlier this month by US national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.

Rice said Pyongyang should follow the lead of Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi who agreed in December to dismantle the country's nuclear, chemical and biological warfare programs and renounce the pursuit of such weapons. In return Washington lifted most sanctions against Libya in April.

The North Korean nuclear stand-off erupted in October 2002 when the United States said Pyongyang had acknowledged it was developing nuclear weapons, violating a 1994 international agreement.

A third round of six-way nuclear talks in Beijing ended without a breakthrough last month, although the United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia agreed to meet again by the end of September.

Both Pyongyang and Washington put forward detailed proposals to settle the issue.

Pyongyang said it would freeze its nuclear program and stop building, testing and transferring nuclear weapons if Washington agreed to reward the communist regime for the freeze.

The United Sates said it was prepared to offer economic and diplomatic rewards if North Korea shut down and sealed its nuclear weapons facilities in three months.

North Korea has demanded energy aid and a US security guarantee and also wants Washington to lift sanctions and remove the Stalinist state from its list of states sponsoring terrorism.

Bolton, on a four-day visit here, held closed-door talks Tuesday with Foreign Minister Ban and other top security officials, the foreign ministry said.

US officials said Bolton's discussions in Seoul and in Tokyo, which he visits from Thursday, would also focus on the US-led international drive to curb the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

Considered one of Washington's more hawkish critics of Pyongyang, Bolton last year called North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il a "tyrannical rogue" and described life in the Stalinist state as a "hellish nightmare".

In return Pyongyang branded him "human scum."

The North Korean regime has attacked a Washington-led scheme pushed by Bolton to crack down on trafficking in weapons of mass destruction by land sea or air that targets Pyongyang and other so-called rogue states or groups.

In a dispatch late Tuesday, the official Korean Central News Agency denounced the United States as "the world's biggest criminal proliferating weapons."

"It is none other than the US which has done illegal acts in arms export, posed a threat to other countries and gained huge profits from it," the agency said. "Yet it has kept mum about these criminal acts."

Established in May last year by US President George W. Bush, the Proliferation Security Initiative groups some dozen countries including Russia.

South Korea, unwilling to upset North Korea, has been reluctant to sign on to the initiative whose members have pledged to crack down on trafficking in nuclear weapons, their components, and delivery systems.

WAR.WIRE