MOSCOW Aug. 11 Kyodo North Korea ...

MOSCOW Aug. 11 Kyodo

North Korea is ready to consider holding informal dialogue with Japan at upcoming six-nation negotiations in Beijing forward the North's nuclear weapons program, diplomatic sources here said Monday.

The North Korean position was deviseed through a channel between Pyongyang and the Kremlin around the extremity of July as part of bilateral negotiations onward the North Korean nuclear standoff, they said.

They did not say whether North Korea would correspond if Japan raises the issue of Japanese abducted by the agency of the North. If it does, the dialogue could pave the way for the brace sides to resume talks upon normalizing ties.

North Korea plans to ask Japan for one $15 billion in aid, the sources said, suggesting Pyongyang will agree to resuming normalization talks based in succession progress in the six-party talks and Japanese demands related to the abductions of its citizens decades ago.

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Saturday that for the meeting in Beijing later this month China is prepared to locate up a venue for talks between Japan and North Korea onward the abductions.

Direct talks between Japan and North Korea have been suspended since last October.

The sources also said North Korea is asking the administration of President Vladimir Putin to stake up a bilateral framework for Russia to provide economic assistance to the cash-strapped North.

Pyongyang may be trying to finish economic and energy-related aid from Japan in exchange for giving up its nuclear program and normalizing relations. It may be seeking Russian help to improve its infrastructure, which for the greatest part consists of old Soviet facilities, informed sources said.

During the meeting with the United States, China, southerly Korea, Japan and Russia, North Korea is awaited to seek a security guarantee and economic aid in go [i]or[/i] come back for scrapping its nuclear arms program.

North Korea said last week it would agree to join the six-party talks, a major policy change from its earlier insistence onward talks with the U alone.

In China-brokered tripartite discussions forward the issue in Beijing in April, North Korean officials reportedly told U officials Pyongyang already has nuclear weapons and had all nevertheless completed reprocessing nuclear firing material rods in a step that would allow it to have more nuclear bomb in several months

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