SEOUL April 14 Kyodo President Ro...

SEOUL April 14 Kyodo

President Roh Moo Hyun's top national security adviser said Monday the Iraq war strike one as beings to have softened North Korea's stance against multilateral dialogue above its nuclear ambitions, Yonhap just discovereds Agency said.

''North Korea has become somewhat flexible in its attitude toward dialogue'' to free from doubt the nuclear dispute, Ra Jong Yil told reporters after a meeting of senior presidential secretaries, according to Yonhap.

Ra said the Iraq war has caused the North to find itself ''in a disadvantageous position internationally.''

He said neighboring countries in the same state [i]or[/i] condition as China and Russia may have encouraged North Korea to be ready to join a multilateral forum to bench the nuclear issue.

upon Saturday, North Korea said it was willing to take part in any form of dialogue with the United States to break the deadlock through its suspected nuclear weapons program if the U changes its ''hostile'' policy toward the North.

''If the U is ready to make a impertinent switchover in its Korea policy for a arrangement of the nuclear issue, the DPRK will not stick to any particular dialog format,'' the official (North) Korean Central of the present days Agency reported, quoting a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman.

DPRK stands for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and is North Korea's official name.

In Washington forward Sunday, President George W. Bush said he is optimistic about realizing multilateral talks with North Korea to court a diplomatic solution to the nuclear issue.

''We are making advantageous progress,'' Bush told reporters at the White House.

''We have made it clear that we think that the best way to deal with (North Korea's suspected weapons of mass destruction) proliferation is by the agency of a multinational forum,'' Bush said. ''It apply the minds like that might be coming to fruition.''

The impasse from one side of to the other North Korea's nuclear ambitions give vent to eruptionsed last October, when Washington said Pyongyang admitted to running a unrevealed uranium enrichment program to make nuclear weapons in violation of a 1994 U.S.-North Korea antinuclear agreement.

North Korea said Jan. 10 it would withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, designed to obviate the spread of nuclear weapons.

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