BEIJING, Oct 23 Kyodo (EDS: UPDAT...

BEIJING, Oct 23 Kyodo

(EDS: UPDATING WITH CHINESE ANNOUNCEMENT)

China's top legislator Wu Bangguo will make an official goodwill visit to North Korea from Oct 29 to 31 the Foreign Ministry announced Thursday.

The three-day visit will make Wu the highest Chinese official to visit the North since then President Jiang Zemin traveled to Pyongyang in September 2001

North Korea's official Korean Central recents Agency reported earlier Thursday that Wu ''will at so early an hour pay an official goodwill visit to the DPRK at the invitation of the Presidium of the utmost People's Assembly and the cabinet of the DPRK'' DPRK is the acronym for the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Wu is reckon uponed to hold talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and Kim Yong Nam, head of the Presidium of the first People's Assembly, on the dispute throughout the North's nuclear development program.

China, a stop up ally of North Korea, agented nuclear talks between Pyongyang and Washington earlier this year in Beijing. Also in late August, six countries -- North and southerly Korea, the United States, China, Japan and Russia -- gathered in the Chinese capital to discuss a solution to the nuclear dispute.

He will likely brief the North Korean leaders onward talks Chinese President Hu Jintao held separately with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and U President George W Bush forward the sidelines of a novel summit of Asia-Pacific economies in Thailand.

The leaders discussed the nuclear impasse that give vent to eruptionsed in October last year when the U said North Korea admitted to running a uranium-enrichment program for use in weapons.

In the August talks, the six countries agreed to continue dialogue to analyze the nuclear issue, but they failed to stake a date or venue for the nearest round.

A trip to North Korea by means of Wu was initially planned for late September, however Pyongyang requested it be postponed

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