On Sunday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov told Russia's Itar-Tass news agency that a reply was expected Monday.

Losyukov was in Pyongyang as part of international efforts to find a diplomatic solution to the crisis over North Korea's nuclear programs.

Russia advocates a plan that would involve security guarantees for North Korea along with a resumption of economic aid for the country in return for its commitment to keep the Korean Peninsula nuclear-free.

The talks between the Russian envoy and North Korean officials were "very warm, friendly and constructive," Losyukov said.

The special envoy met with North Korean Deputy Prime Minister Jo Chang Dok, speaker of the national parliament Choe Tae Bok and Deputy Foreign Minister Kun Sun Un.

AID A POSSIBILITY

In Seoul, US Ambassador Thomas Hubbard said the United States intends to take the lead in defusing the crisis but wants other nations to play a large role.

"We don't see North Korea as exclusively a US problem," Hubbard told South Korea's largest broadcaster, KBS. "Its nuclear threat is not just a threat to the United States, it's a challenge to the entire international system."

Hubbard also repeated the possibility of aid for the North.

"If they satisfy our concerns about the nuclear programs, we are prepared to consider a broad approach that would entail, in the final analysis, some economic cooperation, perhaps in the power field," he said. "We are prepared to go beyond food aid."

NUCLEAR DISPUTE

The dispute began in October when the United States said North Korea had admitted to developing nuclear weapons in violation of a 1994 agreement. In response, Washington suspended fuel shipments guaranteed under the pact.

North Korea in turn expelled UN inspectors, reactivated nuclear facilities and last week withdrew from a global anti-nuclear pact. It has threatened to resume missile tests and reopen a lab that could be used to reprocess spent fuel rods, a step toward making nuclear arms.

On Saturday, Roh Moo-hyun, who was elected on Dec. 19 to be South Korea's next president, said the United States had debated launching a strike against North Korea.

"At the time of the elections, some US officials, who held considerable responsibility in the administration, talked about the possibility of attacking North Korea," Roh told a panel of university professors on Korean television.

But in a statement Sunday, government spokesman Lee Nak-yeon said Roh was referring generally to many media reports at that time about a possible attack on North Korea, and was not saying that US officials were seriously discussing the military option.

"The misunderstanding was created because some foreign media and US press, using this material, reported as if Roh said the possibility of attacking North Korea had been discussed, considered or planned within the US administration," Lee said. "This is an imprecise quotation and can distort his intentions."

Lee said Roh was "well aware" that Bush had no intention of invading North Korea and was willing to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue peacefully.

Washington had emphasized Friday that it had no plans to invade North Korea and was willing to put that guarantee in writing - a step forward but still short of the formal nonaggression treaty Pyongyang wants.

US STRESSES DIPLOMATIC ROUTE

Speaking to Japanese reporters, a senior US official told Reuters on Friday there was "no possibility" at present for a nonaggression pact: Congress would never agree to one, given that North Korea reneged on a 1994 agreement to give up its nuclear weapons program.

But Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage stressed that Washington did not want to attack North Korea and had no desire to meddle in its domestic politics.

"The president has no hostile intentions and no plans to invade. That's an indication that North Korea can have the regime that they want to have," he said in Washington.

To make that official, Armitage said the United States would be willing to exchange letters, documents or some form of written guarantees with the North.

ROH DESCRIBES PRESSURE

Roh, who takes office next month, told the televised panel Saturday about the pressure he was under during his election campaign over the possibility of a US attack on the isolationist North.

"I then felt so desperate. I couldn't even say in public what would happen if the United States attacked North Korea because that would make the people afraid," he said on KBS-TV.

"I then felt that no matter what differences I might face with the United States, I would oppose an attack on North Korea," Roh said. "Fortunately, opinion in the United States started to change to resolving the matter peacefully."

(China Daily January 20, 2003)

South Korea has tried to capitalize on its ties with Pyongyang to help mediate a diplomatic end to the nuclear dispute, but its efforts have been muddied by a scandal that Seoul gave alleged payoffs to the North.

Seoul's government opposition has leveled accusations the outgoing president, Kim Dae-jung, secretly funneled $341 million to North Korea before his historic 2000 summit with that nation's leader, Kim Jong Il.

If true, the payment could be seen as helping seal the meeting, which earned the South Korean president a Nobel Peace Prize that year for his overtures to the North.

Allegations first raised last fall flared again Friday when Roh said prosecutors should investigate the matter. Roh, from Kim's ruling Millennium Democratic Party, takes office next month.

The opposition Grand National Party issued a statement Saturday saying it will "closely watch" whether Roh follows through with his pledge to investigate the allegation.