Roh will fly to Moscow for the long-delayed four-day official visit after ending a two-day state visit to Kazakhstan on September 19 to 20, said Chung Woo-Sung, presidential adviser on foreign affairs.

He will meet President Vladimir Putin on September 21 for talks focusing on the stand-off over the communist North's nuclear weapons programme and other issues.

"President Roh's visit to Russia is aimed at ... securing Russia's cooperation and its constructive role in resolving the North Korean nuclear issue," Chung said.

Roh will also meet Russian political and business leaders, visit a space center, give a speech on Seoul-Moscow ties and receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Moscow.

Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon said the trip will "help create an atmosphere favorable to resolving the North Korean nuclear issue as Russia can play an important role on the issue".

Plans for a Russian trip have been in the pipeline for more than a year but were delayed by scheduling and other problems, officials said here.

Russia is one of six countries holding formal talks on ways to halt North Korea's nuclear weapons programme. The others are the two Koreas, the United States, China and Japan.

A third round of the six-way talks ended in June without tangible progress but the countries agreed to meet again in Beijing by the end of September.

Since then North Korea has adopted a more strident tone toward the United States and South Korea and has expressed doubt about the value of attending further discussions.

China admitted Tuesday the talks process faced difficulties and called on all sides to work together to hold the fourth round this month.

The confrontation began in October 2002 when the United States accused Pyongyang of operating a nuclear weapons program based on enriched uranium, violating the 1994 nuclear freeze of its separate plutonium-producing program.

Other issues likely to come up in Moscow include South Korean imports of oil and natural gas from Russia, cooperation in space technology and the connection of the Trans-Siberian Railway with a railway through the Korean peninsula, Chung said.

In Kazakhstan Roh and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev will sign agreements on aviation and information technology and on South Korea's participation in oil well and mineral development projects.

South Korea's trade volume with Russia reached 4.1 billion dollars in 2003 and its investment in Russia amounted to 3.6 billion dollars as of the end of May.

Roh's visit will end a round of summit diplomacy which he undertook with the four major powers around the Korean peninsula soon after he took office in February 2003, said foreing minister Ban.

Roh has already visited the United States, China and Japan.

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