Capping a week of rising tension with a conciliatory note, a foreign ministry statement issued late Sunday said Pyongyang was ready to sit down and resolve the standoff through six-party talks.

"Our will to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula and seek a negotiated solution to (the nuclear standoff) still remains unchanged," the statement said, according to the official Korean Central News Agency.

It also dropped a precondition to a resumption of the six-way talks by denying it had ever asked for separate, one-on-one talks with Washington, a demand the United States has rejected.

"We have never requested the DPRK (North Korea)-US talks independent of the six-way talks," the foreign ministry spokesman was quoted as saying.

The apparent concession was referred to as a "a step forward," by Japanese government spokesman Hroyuki Hosoda.

"I believe the US will take this as a way to lead to the resumption of talks," he said.

But the concession failed to disperse the gloom cast by indications that the Stalinist state may be only weeks away from kicking over the negotiating table by testing a nuclear device.

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei sounded the latest warning when he said North Korea had little to gain but deeper global enmity by testing a nuclear device.

"I'm not sure they will gain anything by testing other than provoking every member of the international community and bring -- and play a brinkmanship policy, which nobody will benefit," said ElBaradei on Sunday on CNN television.

"I do hope that the North Koreans would absolutely reconsider such a reckless, reckless step."

Recent media reports from the United States have quoted US officials as saying North Korea has been preparing to launch an underground nuclear test since March and might conduct one as early as June.

The New York Times reported Friday that US officials familiar with satellite and intelligence data believed Pyongyang was building a reviewing stand and filling in a tunnel, clear pointers to a potential underground nuclear test.

ElBaradei issued an appeal to world leaders to call Pyongyang to dissuade it from going ahead with the plan.

A North Korean test would cause "a lot of insecurity fallout," ElBaradei said. "The impact on the whole East Asian and Japan, South Korea is tremendous."

The US government believes North Korea has one or two crude nuclear devices and may have extracted enough plutonium for six more since the nuclear standoff erupted in October 2002.

As early as October 2003 North Korea threatened to give a "physical demonstration" of its nuclear deterrent -- North Korea code for a nuclear test.

On February 10 Pyongyang said it had nuclear weapons and planned to build more.

South Korean officials, however, are sceptical that North Korea is preparing an underground nuclear test at Kilju, in northeastern North Korea, where satellite images show the suspected tunnel.

Defence Minister Yoon Kwang-Woong said Friday there was no solid information that would make any assessment possible.

A military intelligence official also said on condition of anonymity that Kilju was an unlikely test site as it was a well-populated area in which a large number of residents would likely be exposed to fallout.

Another official told the Joongang daily on Friday the South Korean government had been aware of the tunnel since the late 1990s and that "there has been no sign indicating preparations for a nuclear arms test."

Talks between the two Koreas, Russia, China, Japan and the United States on the North's nuclear programs have been stalled since a third round of discussions last June.

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