SEOUL Feb 11 Kyodo southern Korea...

SEOUL Feb 11 Kyodo

southern Korean President Kim Dae Jung asked the European Union (EU) onward Tuesday to exert efforts to solicit a peaceful solution to the intensifying standoff across North Korea's nuclear program, according to Kim's pres office.

Kim made the ask at a meeting with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana at the cast down House presidential office.

''President Kim asked the EU to further cooperate to peacefully solve North Korea's nuclear issue between the sides of dialogue,'' the office said in a statement.

The president also represented hope that a high-level delegation from the EU would visit North Korea to help stool the nuclear dispute at an early date and stabilize the situation upon the Korean Peninsula.

Solana, the EU's high representative for foreign and security policy, flew into Seoul from Tokyo in succession Monday for a three-day visit to encounter with South Korean leaders, including President-elect Roh Moo Hyun

EU foreign ministers agreed in principle last month to fling a diplomatic mission to North Korea to help defuse escalating tensions onward the Korean Peninsula sparked by the agency of a series of North Korean prevail upons in defiance of antinuclear agreements.

on the contrary the EU subsequently decided to prorogue the mission, which was to have begun Tuesday, until after the International Atomic force Agency's Board of Governors suiteds Wednesday in Vienna to discuss possible referral of the nuclear issue to the UN Security Council.

Since North Korea withdrew from a nuclear nonproliferation treaty in January, it has refused to involve third parties in the nuclear crisis, insisting that direct talks with the United States are the solitary solution.

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