In a second day of discussions South Korean Prime Minister Lee Hae-chan tried to persuade Kim Yong-nam, North Korea's number two leader, that his country should reopen six-nation dialogue over its atomic ambitions.

Although they bore little fruit, the talks on the margins of a summit in Jakarta were the most senior exchanges between the two countries since 2000 when then South Korean President Kim Dae-jung visited the North's leader Kim Jong-Il.

"We are trying to persuade North Korea to come back to the six-party talks, that's what we are doing at the moment," South Korea's deputy foreign minister, Lee Tae-Shik, told reporters after the 40-minute discussion.

Talks between Pyongyang and the US, South Korea, China, Russia, and Japan aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear arms ambitions stalled last year after three inconclusive rounds.

Efforts to revive the dialogue have taken on a new urgency after the North shut down its only working nuclear reactor and told a visiting US specialist that it planned to use spent nuclear fuel to make weapons-grade plutonium.

Two years ago, North Korea said it unloaded and reprocessed spent fuel from the reactor, producing enough plutonium for six to eight atom bombs.

Concerns have been further heightened by claims that the Stalinist country is planning to test a nuclear weapon.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that the United States believes Pyongyang is possibly planning a test nuclear explosion that would confirm earlier claims that it had nuclear weapons for self-defence.

Kim said Saturday that North Korea may be willing to resume dialogue, but not unconditionally.

"It is necessary (for other participants) to give us some reasons to take part in the six-party talks. If conditions are ripe, we will return," he said, according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency.

In his address to the summit on Friday, Kim said Pyongyang was committed to resolving the nuclear crisis, but warned that any resolution would require Washington to remove its "military threat" from the Korean peninsula.

"Denuclearizing the Korean peninsula is the strategic goal of the DPRK (North Korean) government, and the DPRK remains unchanged in its principle position to resolve the nuclear issue peacefully," Kim said.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, speaking to reporters at the Jakarta summit, said diplomatic approaches were being made to resolve the crisis, which he hoped would avert the need for the involvement of the UN's Security Council.

"Attempts are being made to resolve the issue diplomatically through the six-party talks and I hope that the talks will resume in the not too distant future," he said.

"I hope they will be able to succeed and dissuade North Korea not to continue on its current path."

According to foreign ministry spokesman Lee, efforts to reopen a bilateral dialogue at a ministerial level between North and South were also addressed by the two leaders, a move positively received by Kim.

Talks between the governments of the two Koreas were suspended by North Korea 10 months ago after Pyongyang blasted Seoul for airlifting more that 400 North Korean defectors to South Korea from Vietnam.

"Both the North and the South should make joint efforts to open a new phase in the inter-Korean relations as this year will mark the fifth anniversary of the historic June 15 declaration," Kim said, according to Yonhap.

At the end of the inter-Korean summit in Pyongyang in June 2000, Kim Jong-Il said he would come to Seoul for a second summit but this pledge never became a reality because of mounting tensions over the nuclear issue.

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