"Now that (North Korea) has become a full-fledged nuclear weapons state, the six-party talks should be disarmament talks where the participating countries negotiate the issue on an equal footing," a foreign ministry spokesman said.

The spokesman, in comments carried by the commmunist North's Korean Central News Agency, said the agenda of future nuclear disarmament talks should include the nuclear threat which the United States poses to the Korean Peninsula.

"The US keeps many tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea on a permanent basis," the spokesman said.

Future talks should focus on ways "to completely remove the US threat of nukes and a nuclear war from the peninsula and its vicinity."

The talks should provide "a platform for seeking comprehensive ways of substantially and fairly realizing the denuclearization of the peninsula, not just as a bargaining ground where a give-and-take-type way of solution is discussed," the spokesman said.

"Gone are the days when the six-party talks took up such give-and-take-type issues as reward for freeze."

The spokesman described the ending of Washington's nuclear threat as a prerequisite to peace and stability in Northeast Asia.

The North's possession of nuclear weapons would deter war as Pyongyang and Washington are technically still at war and South Korea is under the US nuclear umbrella, the spokesman said.

The North declared on February 10 that it has nuclear weapons and withdrew indefinitely from the six-party negotiations, which aim to halt the Stalinist state's nuclear arms drive in return for diplomatic and economic benefits.

Since then North Korea has sent mixed signals on its willingness to return to the negotiations, with leader Kim Jong-Il saying it would return if certain conditions are met.

North Korea has demanded an end to US "hostility" and rewards for dismantling its nuclear weapons programme.

South Korea said the North's latest statement would "not be helpful" to the six-party talks which group the US, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia.

"It's not surprising," a senior South Korean official said, adding the statement ran counter to an agreement at previous talks to make the Korean peninsula free of nuclear weapons.

South Korea's position is that North Korea should not become a nuclear-armed country, he said. "There is no reason to change this position."

Christopher Hill, Washington's chief delegate to the talks, said in Hong Kong that the United States would consider other options if North Korea refuses to return to the discussions. He did not elaborate.

Hill said efforts are being made by different countries especially China to get North Korea to rejoin the talks.

"We all need to keep working on this. I don't think any of us could be satisfied with any efforts until we get this thing going."

Earlier this month US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Washington would consider "other options" if the talks fail, but made it clear that a military attack was not one of them.

The six nations met three times to try to resolve the standoff that erupted in 2002 when the United States accused the North of operating a secret uranium-enrichment program.

The talks made little progress and North Korea boycotted a fourth round scheduled for September last year.

Washington believes North Korea possesses one or two crude bombs and may have reprocessed enough plutonium from spent fuel rods at its Yongbyon nuclear complex for half-a-dozen more.

All rights reserved. © 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.