Bush and Abe discussed over the telephone the North Korean situation and "agreed that it's regrettable that North Korea has yet to fulfill its commitments under the February 13th agreement," White House Press Secretary Tony Snow told reporters.

Abe, who made the call, had warned last week that Japan "won't stay patient forever" and "if North Korea does not carry out what it had promised, we will have to think about a variety of options."

Japan has already imposed sweeping sanctions against North Korea including a ban on all imports.

North Korea has still not received its funds from the Macau bank even though Washington said in March that the money -- reportedly proceeds from Pyongyang's money laundering and counterfeiting activities -- had been unfrozen.

Foreign banks are reportedly unwilling to handle the suspicious cash for fear of sullying their own reputations.

Abe also briefed Bush on his recent visit to the Middle East, including to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Qatar.

Washington is rallying support from the Arab states for US efforts to stabilize war-torn Iraq.

The two leaders "agreed that it's indispensable that governments support (Iraqi) Prime Minister (Nuri al) Maliki and his government as they work on Iraqi reconstruction," Snow said.

They also agreed that Iran must give up its nuclear weapons ambitions and stop interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq, he said.

Bush and Abe said that they looked forward to a meeting at the sidelines of the upcoming G8 summit in Germany.

Meanwhile, the top US envoy on the North Korean nuclear crisis Christopher Hill is to travel to Britain and Southeast Asia to discuss Asian security issues.

He is to participate at a conference on Asian security in London from May 19 to 21 and proceed to Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia "for discussions on bilateral and regional issues," said deputy State Department spokesman Tom Casey.

In Manila, Hill, who is assistant US secretary of state, would also attend a senior officials' meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum on May 25.

Casey ruled out prospects of a meeting between Hill and his North Korean counterpart in London on the nuclear crisis.

"There is nothing on his agenda at this point for a meeting with the North Koreans," he said.

In January, Hill met his North Korean counterpart Kim Kye-gwan in Berlin in a surprise encounter that helped break a deadlock on the nuclear problem.

earlier related report
US ex-envoy sure NKorea had secret nuke programme
Seoul (AFP) May 14 - The man at the centre of the 2002 North Korean nuclear crisis said Monday he is certain the communist state at the time was running a secret highly-enriched uranium programme (HEU) to make weapons.

US accusations of a covert programme led to the breakdown of a 1994 deal to freeze the North's plutonium-based nuclear programme, and last October the reclusive regime staged its first nuclear test.

But suspicions were aired earlier this year about the quality of the US intelligence which prompted the claims.

"They were (pursuing a HEU programme). I definitely thought they were. I don't think that those facts are in question," former US nuclear envoy on North Korea James Kelly told AFP.

"It was crystal-clear that they invested hundreds of millions of dollars in it over quite a few years, going back into certainly the late 80s and possibly the early 90s," the former assistant secretary of state said of the programme.

Speaking on the sidelines of a Seoul forum, he said he could not be certain the North is still pursuing the programme as he no longer has access to intelligence.

Kelly in 2002 met North Korean first vice foreign minister Kang Sok-Ju, who according to US officials admitted the existence of the covert HEU programme.

"All of the US officials dependently and independently understood he (Kang) acknowledged the existence of the HEU programme," David Straub, who accompanied Kelly on the 2002 Pyongyang trip, told the forum.

Pyongyang denied having a HEU programme, and in protest at the accusations reactivated its plutonium-producing nuclear reactor, expelled UN atomic inspectors and eventually tested its first atomic bomb.

In February it agreed on a deal to scrap all its nuclear programmes in exchange for aid and diplomatic benefits. But the first phase of disarmament is being delayed by a banking row.

Kelly's successor Christopher Hill said in March that North Korea should come clean about the HEU programme as well as its plutonium-based one.

US intelligence agencies came in for harsh criticism after President George W. Bush's administration in February seemed to scale back the certainty it had expressed in 2002 about the HEU programme.

"We still have confidence that the programme is in existence -- at the mid-confidence level," Joseph De Trani, North Korea mission manager for the US Director of National Intelligence, told the US Senate Armed Services Committee then.

De Trani later said intelligence agencies "have at least moderate confidence that North Korea's past efforts to acquire a uranium enrichment capability continue today."

Kelly said in a report to the forum that North Korea is still believed to harbour nuclear ambitions despite the disarmament deal.

"It is unlikely, yet at least, that North Korea has made the strategic choice to give up its nuclear weapons," he said in the report.

He warned South Koreans against seeing the nuclear problem as more of a US-North Korean bilateral issue than one involving themselves.

"There is a tendency to see North Korea's nuclear weapons, not as a threat to South Korea, but as some dispute that only involves North Korea and the United States. Such an attitude is a serious mistake."

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