Unification Minister Jeong Se-Hyun, Seoul's chief policymaker for relations with the North, said tensions could rise because North Korea wants inspections of its nuclear facilities delayed.

A top South Korean envoy who is to visit Pyongyang next week has said he will raise international concerns about the North's nuclear and missile programmes.

And the United States has stepped up pressure on the secretive communist state by saying it cannot certify that North Korea is keeping to a 1994 accord to freeze its suspected nuclear weapons development. President George W. Bush this year said the North was part of "an axis of evil" spreading weapons of mass destruction.

The 1994 accord was reached after a standoff between North Korea and the United States that took the Korean peninsula to the brink of war.

Jeong said in a lecture on South Korea-US relations with North Korea that "there was some talk in the United States that the nuclear inspection in North Korea should be carried out this August while North Korea's version is that the inspection should be delayed until 2005."

"If this issue becomes an international point of contention, a crisis could come in August on the Korean peninsula."

Lim Dong-Won, a special advisor to President Kim Dae-Jung on national security and foreign affairs who is to go to Pyongyang next Wednesday, has also warned of a looming nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula.

Lim has said it could come next year unless US-led concerns over North Korea's nuclear programme are eased.

The envoy said the problems could be as serious as the 1994 nuclear crisis.

North Korea agreed to freeze its nuclear programme then under an accord with a US-led international consortium.

The consortium is to build two light-water nuclear reactors that produce less weapons-grade fuel than North Korea's old graphite reactors and provide substitute fuel until they are built.

However, the original 2003 target date for completion of the plants has been put back at least five years because of major political and construction delays.

Under the 1994 accord, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) must be allowed to inspect North Korea's old facilities to see if plutonium has been processed before the core facilities of the new reactors are installed.

The unification minister said "we (Korean people) seem to be insensitive to security. Rumours of a crisis on the Korean peninsula in 2003 were widely circulating in Japan as early as January this year."

Following Jeong's comments, another senior government official sought to play down the looming troubles.

The unidentified official told the Yonhap national news agency that talk of pressing for IAEA inspections in August had come only from private researchers in the United States. The official said it was "speculation" that North Korea thinks the inspections should be delayed until 2005.

The United States, however, has expressed growing disquiet at the North's activities in recent weeks.

The US administration said last week it would not certify that North Korea is abiding by the 1994 deal.

Bush accepted a recommendation by Secretary of State Colin Powell to withhold for the first time annual certification required by Congress on the 1994 deal.

"There is no question the president has concerns," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.

"We have not been provided with sufficient information by the North Koreans; concerns remain about their compliance with the Agreed Framework."

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