"North Korea indicated in a letter to the UN Security Council chairman that it had attempted to enrich uranium and succeeded to a degree," Foreign Minister Yu Myung-Hwan told reporters.

"Since this is a very worrying development, this issue is expected to be discussed separately by the United Nations."

Visiting US Defence Secretary Robert Gates and his Korean counterpart will assess the North's nuclear and missile threat at a meeting Thursday.

North Korea said last month it had reached the final stage of enriching uranium, a second way of making nuclear bombs on top of its plutonium-based programme, in a defiant response to United Nations sanctions.

The sanctions were tightened after the North in May conducted its second plutonium-based nuclear test.

Experts believe the North has enough plutonium for possibly six to eight bombs. A full-scale enriched uranium programme is seen as a distant prospect, but troubling because it could be easily hidden from spy satellites.

Early this month, the North expressed willingness to return to the six-party nuclear disarmament talks which it quit in April, on condition it first makes progress in a bilateral meeting with the United States.

The State Department said Friday it had issued a visa for senior North Korean diplomat Ri Gun to attend conferences in the United States, in what is seen as a potential opportunity to set up bilateral talks.

But minister Yu said he was still sceptical about its commitment to nuclear disarmament.

"There is no evidence on which we can rely to believe that North Korean conciliatory gestures result from a fundamental change to its attitude towards the nuclear issue," Yu said.

He repeated that South Korea and other six-party talks partners would continue a "two-track" approach of sanctions and dialogue. The talks group the two Koreas, Japan, China, Russia and the United States.

After months of sabre-rattling, the North since August has made peace overtures to Seoul and Washington. But last week it also test-fired short-range missiles and warned South Korea of a potential naval clash on their disputed border.

Gates will hold talks with Defence Minister Kim Tae-Young during his visit.

They "will be sure to warn North Korea against further escalating military tensions" in their Security Consultative Meeting Thursday, a senior defence official told Yonhap news agency on condition of anonymity.

"Having such meetings at this time will amount to a grave warning to North Korea," Brigadier General Jung Yeon-Bong, another senior official, told reporters.

The US stations some 28,500 troops to bolster South Korea's 655,000-strong armed forces against the North's 1.2 million-member military.

The security meeting will also cover the issue of strengthening South Korea's military power, said Brigadier General Wee Seung-Ho, a senior policymaker at the Joint Chiefs of Command.

But the two sides will not discuss the South's desire to develop longer-range missiles, he said.

Under an agreement with the United States, Seoul currently limits its ballistic missiles to a maximum range of 300 km (187 miles)

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