S.Korea has new offer if North goes to atom talks

SEOUL, Monday (Reuters) South Korea is prepared to make a new and serious proposal to advance six-country talks on North Korea's nuclear programmes if Pyongyang returns to the stalled negotiations, a South Korean official told the North on Monday.

The proposal would differ from an offer of aid and security guarantees made at the last round of the talks in June last year, Vice Unification Minister Rhee Bong-jo told North Koreans at bilateral talks in the northern city of Kaesong, pool reports said.

He declined to elaborate on what would be included. "We conveyed to them that if North Korea comes to the six-party talks, we will prepare a serious proposal for substantive progress in the nuclear problem," a Unification Ministry official quoted Rhee as telling the North.

Rhee also said North Korea's possession of nuclear weapons was completely unacceptable, pool reports from the talks said.

"The non-nuclearisation of the Korean peninsula that South and North Korea agreed to must be kept," Rhee was quoted as telling the North. "If not, neither national cooperation nor South-North reconciliation will be possible."