"General-level talks will start on Tuesday," a ministry spokesman quoted him as telling a seminar.

North Korea had proposed the general-level talks in response to Seoul's request for a lower-level military meeting to prepare for the first test runs of railways across their frontier in half a century.

"The purpose of the talks is to discuss military security measures for the test runs of the railways," said the minister, in charge of relations with the North.

"But there will also be discussions about military tension reduction and a peace settlement on the Korean peninsula as this is the first (general-level) meeting since North Korea carried out its nuclear test."

Relations between the two nations, which have remained technically at war since the 1950-53 conflict, soured after the North's missile launches last July and nuclear test last October.

They improved after the North agreed in principle in February to scrap its nuclear programme as part of a multinational deal.

Following a historic inter-Korean summit in 2000, the two sides completed laying tracks alongside cross-border roads that opened in 2005 for limited traffic.

Seoul asked last year that the North's military provide a safety guarantee for the two lines, in the west and on the east coast.

But the last general-level meeting in May 2006 ended without agreement on redrawing a disputed maritime border or on safety guarantees for the railways.

Officials said separately that President Roh Moo-Hyun has invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to visit South Korea for talks on joint projects including plans for a Korea-Russia railway.

The invitation was extended last month when former Prime Minister Han Myeong-Sook visited Moscow to attend former leader Boris Yeltsin's funeral.

A government official said Seoul "has no intention of rushing" into the costly and complicated project to link the Trans-Siberian railway and a planned Trans-Korean railway.

Such a project would create a land bridge for freight between Korea and Europe.

But apart from securing agreement to open the border for trains, the North's crumbling rail infrastructure north of the frontier would also have to be upgraded before it could go ahead.

earlier related report
NKorea talks to shift to Egypt
Seoul (AFP) May 3 - Foreign ministers from five of the six nations involved in talks on North Korea's nuclear programme plan to meet in Egypt this week on the sidelines of an international conference on Iraq, officials said Thursday.

The ministers from the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea were to attend the conference in the Egyptian resort of Sharm El-Sheikh later Thursday on the reconstruction of war-torn Iraq.

"There have been preparations for a separate five-nation meeting but the schedule has yet to be fixed," a South Korean foreign ministry official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Japan's Kyodo news agency quoted sources as saying the meeting would take place on Friday and aim to pressure on North Korea to implement a six-nation nuclear disarmament accord.

The other nation in the six-party nuclear disarmament talks is North Korea itself.

However, US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, who was in Sharm el-Sheikh, said later on Thursday that the meeting would not take place.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency said Wednesday that Foreign Minister Song Min-Soon will stay in Sharm El-Sheikh for two more days to hold talks with his counterparts from the United States, Japan and Russia.

The Yonhap report did not mention China.

"The minister will try to hold bilateral meetings with his US, Japanese and Russian counterparts on Thursday and Friday to discuss the North Korean nuclear issue," an unidentified ministry official was quoted as saying.

A February agreement set April 14 as the deadline for the North to shut its Yongbyon nuclear reactor as a first step in scrapping its nuclear programmes.

This slipped by because of an unresolved dispute over North Korean accounts frozen at a Macau bank.

Washington says the funds have been released for collection and it has done all that it should. But Pyongyang has refused to act until it gets the money back.

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