US Senator Joseph Biden admonished North Korean UN ambassador Gil Yon Park that the country's efforts to obtain nuclear weapons destabilized the Korean peninsula, but is self-defeating politically and economically.

"The North's nuclear program is a giant albatross around your neck, in my view. It's a waste of resources (and) strains relations with your neighbors," said Biden, top Democrat on the US Foreign Relations Committee, adding that nuclear weapons afforded North Korea a "false sense of security."

"We seek permanent verifiable elimination of all of North Korea's weapons," Biden said at the forum organized by the New York-based Korea Society, which was also attended by Pyongyang's deputy UN representative Song Ryol Han.

Both sides stand to gain from North Korea's disarming he said. "This is not a zero sum game."

Biden's colleague in the House of Representatives, Republican Representative Curt Weldon said that "there's no more important issue that confronts the world" than that of building down tensions between North Korea and the West and convincing Pyongyang of the need to disarm.

Both lawmakers urged Washington and Seoul to work harder to achieve significant progress when a fourth round of six-way nuclear talks with the United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia is held in September.

A third round of six-way talks in Beijing last month ended without major progress, but Biden said conditions now appear right for a breakthrough.

"This administration is now ready, Congress is ready, for absolute serious negotiations," Biden said.

"There are a great number of us in this country who play some small part in the political establishment who see getting the relationship right with North Korea as absolutely critical for our mutual security."

For his part, Park reiterated North Korea's position that it might be willing to consider freezing its nuclear program if Washington agrees to reward the Communist regime for the freeze, saying that substantial differences between the two countries remain.

Several members of South Korea's National Assembly also spoke at the event.

North Korea has demanded energy aid and a US security guarantee and also wants Washington to lift sanctions and remove the Stalinist state from its list of states sponsoring terrorism.

The North Korean nuclear stand-off erupted in October 2002, when the United States said Pyongyang had acknowledged it was developing nuclear weapons, violating a 1994 international agreement.

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