North Korea has made it known that it wants to return to dialogue and says it is ready to scrap its nuclear weapons ambitions in return for concessions from Washington.

Now it is awaiting a response to the offer from Bush who will lay out his second term foreign and domestic goals during his State of the Union address in Washington on Wednesday.

"They're expected to attend the dialogue at an appropriate time after President Bush's address," South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon said Tuesday.

South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-Young also said on Sunday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that North Korea was looking for positive signs in Bush's address before resuming multilateral talks on its nuclear weapons plans.

On the day of Bush's speech, Michael Green, senior director for Asian affairs on Bush's National Security Council, will fly to Seoul for high-level talks on North Korea.

Seoul is the final leg of an Asia trip that has taken Green and the council's senior proliferation official William Tobey to Japan and China for talks with senior oficials.

During his stay until Thursday, Green will discuss with South Korean officials "a wide range of important regional and international issues including the US desire to see progress at the six-party talks," a US embassy spokesman said.

Green will also carry a letter from President Bush to South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun that can convey his views on issues of mutual concern, the spokesman said.

North Korea attended three rounds of inconclusive six-nation discussions on the nuclear stand-off, which included the two Koreas, the United States, Japan Russia and China.

Pyongyang shunned a fourth round originally scheduled for last September, complaining of "hostile" US policies.

The US embassy spokesman said that during the last six-party talks in Beijing in June, US delegates placed a "forward looking proposal" on the table.

"We look forward to discussing that proposal at the next round of talks. The United States seeks a diplomatic solution to the problem through the six-party talks," he said.

Green is scheduled to meet South Korean deputy foreign minister Song Min-Soon, Lee Jong-Jeok, deputy secretary general of the National Security Council and Cho Tae-Yong, head of the Foreign Ministry's task force on the nuclear dispute.

The North Korean nuclear issue also dominated a phone conversation late Monday between South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon and his new US counterpart Condoleezza Rice, according to foreign ministry officials here.

The two pledged to work closely together to resolve the nuclear standoff peacefully, ministry spokesman Lee Kyu-hyung said in a statement.

They also shared the view that it is time for North Korea to return to dialogue, now that President Bush's second-term security line-up has taken shape, he said.

North Korea said earlier that it was waiting to see the shape of the new Bush foreign policy team before annnouncing a return to dialogue.

The standoff erupted in October, 2002 after US officials accused Pyongyang of operating a secret uranium-enriching programme to produce weapons in a breach of a 1994 agreement, a charge denied by North Korea.