The report could not be confirmed independently. The talks resume Monday in Beijing.

"At the meeting, the US side reaffirmed it has no intention to attack or invade North Korea as was stated in the (2005) September joint agreement," a diplomatic source was quoted as saying by Yonhap.

"The US side suggested it could give such a security guarantee in a written form in the name of President Bush," the source said.

In return, North Korea should take specific steps, he said.

These reportedly include freezing its nuclear facilities at Yongbyon north of Pyongyang, allowing inspections by international watchdogs and shutting down its nuclear test site at Punggyeri in the northeast.

"Such a written security guarantee can be seen as a prelude to the normalization of diplomatic ties between North Korea and the United States," the source said.

North Korea signed on to a vaguely worded statement in September 2005, pledging to give up its nuclear ambitions in return for security guarantees, energy assistance and improved relations with the West.

But it pulled out of the talks two months later, protesting at US sanctions which froze its accounts in a Macau bank because of alleged counterfeiting and other illicit activities.

It then conducted its first nuclear test in October, triggering global condemnation and United Nations sanctions.

US Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said Wednesday that North Korea had indicated it was ready to "deal in specifics" about giving up its nuclear arsenal when it returns to the talks.

But Hill, the chief US representative to the forum, predicted "very tough negotiations" ahead.

earlier related report
Previous Bid To Scrap North Korea Nukes Winds Up
Seoul (AFP) Dec 14 - Just days before a fresh international effort to dismantle North Korea's nuclear programme, officials announced Thursday that an earlier initiative which cost 1.65 billion dollars is being formally wound up. An international energy consortium has signed a final agreement with a South Korean firm to liquidate its 10-year project to build two light-water nuclear reactors in the North, said Moon Dae-Keun of South Korea's unification ministry, which handles relations with the communist state.

"In a December 8 meeting in New York, the executive board of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) approved a deal with the Korea Electric Power Corporation," Yonhap news agency quoted Moon as saying.

Moon said the agreement formalises an initial deal in June, under which the South Korean power company would bear the cost of liquidating the 4.6-billion dollar project in return for all of KEDO's tangible assets outside the North.

About 1.65 billion dollars had been spent on the project, of which more than 1.14 billion came from South Korea, Moon was quoted as saying.

Under a 1994 agreement between the United States and North Korea, the North agreed to freeze its nuclear activities in return for economic incentives including the light-water reactors -- which, unlike the North's existing graphite-moderated reactors, were more resistant to proliferation.

KEDO, a consortium grouping South Korea, Japan, the European Union and the United States, was set up to implement the deal, which also involved interim deliveries of heavy fuel oil to the North.

It fell apart after the United States in October 2002 said Pyongyang had admitted running a secret uranium enrichment program in violation of the 1994 deal.

North Korea never publicly admitted the uranium programme but in January 2003 announced it would quit the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The following year it announced it had completed processing 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods. The activity is believed to have created as much as 40 kilograms (88 pounds) of weapons-grade plutonium -- enough to make six to eight atomic bombs.

Six-party talks aimed at persuading the North to scrap its programme in return for economic aid and security guarantees began in 2003. They resume Monday in Beijing after a 13-month break.

earlier related report
Japan Says No Aid To North Korea Until Abductions Resolved
Tokyo (AFP) Dec 14 - Japan warned Thursday it would not offer aid to North Korea even if it gives up nuclear weapons unless it resolves a row over abductions of Japanese citizens. Japan is one of six countries in talks on ending North Korea's nuclear drive that are set to resume Monday in Beijing after a 13-month hiatus during which North Korea tested an atom bomb.

"Even if chair-country China makes an effort to resolve the nuclear and missile issues at the six-way talks, I want others to remember that Japan has the issue of abductions," Foreign Minister Taro Aso said.

"I cannot say that things between Japan and North Korea are resolved unless this issue is resolved," he told a parliamentary committee.

"Therefore, even if talks are concluded with some results and we are asked to offer our own contribution or a list of donations, we have no intention to accept that. That's what we have to make sure of."

In a September 2005 statement that will be the basis for next week's talks, impoverished North Korea agreed to give up its nuclear drive in exchange for security guarantees and aid.

Under a collapsed 1994 deal, Japan and South Korea were major contributors to a project to build light-water reactors in North Korea.

North Korea has admitted kidnapping Japanese civilians in the 1970s and 1980s to train its spies and handed over five victims and their families to Japan in 2002.

Japan believes more kidnap victims are alive and kept under wraps because they know secrets. Aso on Thursday met family members of alleged kidnap victims, including those from South Korea and Thailand.

"I appreciate very much that Japan has concerns about us," said Thai national Bangjong Panjoy, whose aunt Anocha Panjoy was allegedly abducted.

"To solve this abduction issue, the cooperation of (Japanese) people is necessary," he told reporters.

Anocha Panjoy was reported missing in Macau in 1978.

Charles Jenkins, a former US army deserter to the North, said she was his neighbor in Pyongyang, sparking concern in Thailand.

Japan has repeatedly raised the emotionally charged row in six-way talks, angering North Korea and irritating China and South Korea. Russia and the United States are the other two countries in the talks.

North Korea has demanded that Japan be excluded from the talks and hit back that more Koreans remain unaccounted for from Japan's 1910-1945 occupation of the Korean peninsula.

earlier related report
Analysis: N.Korea's Kim focuses on economy
Seoul (UPI) Dec. 14 - North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, who almost vanished from public view for several months amid strong outside pressures following the country's missile and nuclear tests, has recently increased his public activities.

Kim's brisk public engagements are considered here as a sign that he is confident of the country's nuclear strategy, which might trigger grave consequences and determine the fate of his country.

Kim was absent from public appearances in the North's normally doting state-controlled media since July 5 when the country conducted multiple test-launches of ballistic missiles, sparking speculation he was hiding in a bunker for fear of U.S. attacks. Before that, Kim appeared in public sites more than seven times a month.

Kim remained in hiding in October when outside pressures were gaining momentum following North Korea's Oct. 9 nuclear bomb test and consequent U.N. resolution to impose financial sanctions on the impoverished country.

But since the North agreed on Oct. 31 to return to the long-stalled six-nation talks on its nuclear weapons programs, the reclusive has resumed public activities, making "on-the-spot" guidance tours.

He made at least 10 public appearances in November and more than eight this month, frequently appearing at industrial sites, according to Pyongyang's official media.

In the past, most of Kim's public appearances were related to the military, part of his much-touted "songun (army-first) politics." The North's 1.2-million-strong armed forces, the world's fifth largest, are the backbone of Kim's iron-fisted rule. He rules the communist country in the capacity of the supreme military commander.

Since the nuclear test, however, Kim has increased his appearances at economy-related sites, traveling to cooperative farms, hydraulic power plant constrictions and other industrial facilities, indicating he was making more efforts to revive the country's battered economy.

During a recent visit to the power plant construction site at the Ryesong River, south of Pyongyang, Kim called for building more hydraulic power stations as a way to ease the country's chronic electricity shortage.

He called on constructors and officials there to "fully display the heroic stamina of 'songun' Korea with redoubled courage in the revolutionary soldier spirit, the revolutionary spirit of fortitude to complete the project earlier than scheduled," according to the North's state-run Korean Central News Agency.

Kim stressed hydro-electric power projects as a "shortcut" to satisfactorily meet the increasing demand for electricity, it said. If North Korea fully uses its rich hydropower resources, Kim said, it would bring about a signal turn in settling the problem of electricity in the near future, according to the KCNA reports.

In line with the dam constructions, the North has launched nation-wide campaigns to reduce energy consumptions, in an apparent bid to brace for worsening energy shortages in the wake of U.N.-backed sanctions.

The North has also pushed for developing wind energy as a long-term project to find alternative energy sources.

The Choson Sinbo, a pro-Pyongyang newspaper of the ethnic Koreans in Japan, said Kim's brisk economic activities reflect his "pragmatic" approach to revive the country's sluggish economy.

According to a North Korean document obtained by a South Korean daily last week, Pyongyang has decided to focus its national efforts on economic development as the Oct. 9 nuclear test has resolved military threats to its national security.

"As the nuclear test has removed threats to (the country's) survival, all of its efforts will be made to achieve economic development," the document was quoted as saying.

The 16-page document, titled "The successful nuclear test in our country is a historic incident in its 5,000 years-long history and world politics," was authored by the North's ruling Korean Workers' Party headed by Kim.

The document also said North Korea has "poured a huge amount of manpower, material and intelligent resources" into developing nuclear weapons, according to the daily. But the "successful" nuclear test had allowed North Korea to shift its first priority to economy from security, it said.

With nuclear bombs in hand, North Korea could sharply reduce its spending on conventional weapons for economic development, according to the document.

Choson Sinbo also said the nuclear test has paved the way for North Korea to focus its national efforts on the economy.

"Guidance tours of the economy sector by the supreme leader (Kim Jong Il) following the nuclear test have served as a momentum to prompt fresh public efforts (toward economic development)," the daily said in a dispatch from Pyongyang.

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