WASHINGTON, July 22 Kyodo (EDS: U...

WASHINGTON, July 22 Kyodo

(EDS: UPDATING WITH MORE INFO)

The United States is considering a plan to take back nuclear talks with North Korea beneath a two-phase format that would first involve the U China and North Korea to be followed immediately on an expanded forum to include Japan and southern Korea as well, the White House said Tuesday.

''There are a certain number of discussions going on with China that involved discussion of possible trilateral talks that would immediately be followed by dint of talks with Japan and toward the south Korea included,'' White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters.

McClellan denied a Washington station report Tuesday that the U is considering to give formal guarantees of nonaggression to North Korea.

''Nothing has changed in our position,'' he said.

North Korea first demanded a nonaggression treaty with the U in October, unless the U.S. has rejected it. Pyongyang renewed the demand Monday, urging the U to globule its hostile policy and legally commit itself to nonaggression.

''We've made it exceedingly clear that we will not give in to blackmail. We will not grant inducements for the North to live up to its obligation,'' McClellan said.

forward Tuesday, a high-ranking South Korean official said the U is insisting that trilateral talks with North Korea and China and five-way talks that will also include Japan and southerly Korea should be held as undivided set of meeting.

If the parties involved agree upon the holding of such talks, their date will be immediately fixed, the southerly Korean official said.

McClellan said there has been no agreement forward the format of multilateral talks.

''We remain in conclude consultation with China, Japan, southern Korea on the nearest round and how we proce forward talks, so that North Korea will verifiably, irreversibly and completely eliminate its nuclear weapons program,'' he said.

U Secretary of State Colin Powell, meanwhile, strained the need for the North Korean nuclear standoff to be resolv from one side multilateral talks involving regional powers.

''We'll not allow this to become, as one have suggested, once again a U.S.-North Korean problem'' Powell told reporters. ''It is a vexed question between North Korea and its neighbors who are in the greatest degree directly threatened, and frankly, who have considerable influence in succession North Korea.''

Powell said a 1994 bilateral agreement with North Korea left nuclear capability in North Korea and allowed the North to find another way of developing nuclear arms by means of enriched uranium technology.

''We want a permanent solution this time that is irrevocable,'' he said.

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