Global Policy Forum

By Norimitsu Onishi

North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, said Friday that his nation was ready to resume negotiations over its nuclear arms program as early as next month, provided the United States treated it with respect, the South Korean government said. Mr. Kim also said that if the nuclear crisis were resolved, North Korea would be ready to rejoin the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and allow international nuclear inspectors inside the country, said Chung Dong Young, South Korea's minister of unification, who met with Mr. Kim. This part of the proposal was apparently being put forth for the first time, South Korean Foreign Ministry officials said.

While Mr. Chung did not elaborate on what Mr. Kim meant by "respect," North Korea has complained about the Bush administration's use of phrases like "outpost of tyranny" to describe it. "The North's leader, Kim Jong Il, said if the United States firmly recognizes North Korea as a partner and respects it, North Korea can return to six-party talks, even in July," Mr. Chung said after returning to Seoul from Pyongyang, North Korea's capital, on Friday evening.

In Washington, the Bush administration dismissed Mr. Kim's comments, repeating its past insistence that North Korea return to negotiations with no preconditions. Adam Ereli, a State Department spokesman, said the administration had no intention of improving on an offer that it extended to North Korea a year ago. "We've got a proposal out there," he said. "The proposal should be engaged seriously" and would be discussed, he said, only as part of six-nation talks, involving the two Koreas, Japan, China, Russia and the United States. The administration's offer holds out the possibility of increased aid from Japan and South Korea, and eventual normalization of relations with the United States, in return for North Korea's full dismantlement of both of its suspected nuclear weapons development programs. On June 7, the United States and China said North Korean officials had indicated that they would eventually return to the talks, though no date had been set. But American officials expressed caution about the North's intentions.

North Korea's proposal on Friday mostly did not contain anything new. But it was significant because it came directly from Mr. Kim, and not through the usual murky statement released by the official news agency. It amounted to the most positive sign yet that the nuclear talks, boycotted by North Korea since last June, have a chance of being revived. Mr. Kim, who rarely meets foreign dignitaries, made the statement at a meeting in Pyongyang with Mr. Chung, who was leading a delegation on a four-day visit. Mr. Chung conveyed a message by South Korea's president, Roh Moo Hyun, calling for a quick resolution to the nuclear crisis, according to media pool reports from Pyongyang. Mr. Chung was the first South Korean official to meet with Mr. Kim in three years.

At the news conference in Seoul, Mr. Chung said North Korea also seemed to be seeking assurances, as it has in the past, that it would not be attacked first by the United States. "If the regime's security is guaranteed, there is no reason to possess a single nuclear weapon," Mr. Chung quoted Mr. Kim as saying. North Korea withdrew from the treaty in 2003 after American officials accused it of running a covert uranium enrichment program, which set off the current crisis. Early this year, the North declared that it had nuclear weapons. The six-nation talks began in the summer of 2003 but have failed to make progress partly because of disunity among the participants. While the United States and Japan have threatened punitive measures to try to coax North Korea back to the bargaining table, China and South Korea have emphasized that clearer incentives are necessary.

North Korea, which has cited America's "hostile" policies as its reason for refusing to resume negotiations, has "never given up" on the talks, Mr. Chung quoted Mr. Kim as saying. China, with South Korea to a lesser extent, has also criticized the American rhetoric leveled at the North, saying that the use of terms like "outpost of tyranny" to describe North Korea is negotiating in bad faith. In Friday's meeting, Mr. Kim said North Korea "was trying to stand against the United States because it looked down on us," Mr. Chung said. In contrast to the often heated language used by both sides to describe each other's leaders, Mr. Kim said he "has no reason to think badly" of President Bush, Mr. Chung said. In South Korea, where the nuances of American officials' ways of addressing North Korea's leader are dissected, officials noted that Mr. Bush recently used the courtesy title Mr. in referring to Mr. Kim. In April, Mr. Bush called Mr. Kim, who has built a cult of personality in his nation, a "tyrant" and accused him of maintaining "concentration camps." North Korea responded by attacking Mr. Bush as a "philistine whom we can never deal with."

About 40 South Korean officials were visiting Pyongyang this week to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the inter-Korean summit meeting in 2000 between Mr. Kim and Kim Dae Jung, then the South Korean president. Mr. Kim has yet to fulfill a pledge made during that meeting to visit Seoul. Critics of Seoul's policy of engagement toward North Korea say the North has used these meetings to appeal to Korean nationalism and extract concessions from Seoul. Those criticisms are likely to increase if nothing comes of Friday's meeting. The meeting came a week after Mr. Roh and Mr. Bush, during a visit to the White House by the South Korean president, tried to narrow their differences over North Korea and present a united front.

On Thursday, Mr. Chung met Kim Yong Nam, North Korea's No. 2 leader, who reportedly complained that the United States did not recognize North Korea as a legitimate partner. "If the United States recognizes our system and institution, we too will treat it as a friend," Mr. Chung quoted Kim Yong Nam as saying.

David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Washington for this article.