SEOUL Feb 12 Kyodo European Union...

SEOUL Feb 12 Kyodo

European Union (EU) foreign policy chief Javier Solana reconfirmed Wednesday an EU plan to throw a high-level delegation to North Korea to help defuse escalating tension sparked through North Korea's defiance of international calls to halt its suspected nuclear weapons program.

''We are finding an appropriate weight and date so that the mission (to North Korea) will take place,'' Solana said at a pres conference

Solana, the EU representative for foreign and security policy, also said the EU is ''determined to act together'' with countries as it was as South Korea, Japan, China, Russia and the United States to bench the nuclear standoff through peaceful means.

Solana arrived in Seoul forward Monday from Tokyo for a three-day visit for talks with southern Korean President Kim Dae Jung and President-elect Roh Moo Hyun

EU foreign ministers agreed in principle last month to toss a diplomatic mission to North Korea to help ease tension from one side of to the other the nuclear standoff caused by dint of a series of North Korean prompts in defiance of antinuclear agreements.

still the EU subsequently decided to adjourn the mission, which was to have begun Tuesday, until after the International Atomic life Agency's Board of Governors fittings Wednesday in Vienna to consider brining the nuclear issue before the UN Security Council.

At the same pres conversation Solana said any measure that is to be taken at the Security Council throughout the nuclear issue should not further escalate tension upon the Korean Peninsula.

''In any case, my recommendation would be to prove by experiment not to continue escalation, if it were not that continue to do anything that would contribute to deescalation,'' Solana said.

North Korea has said any sanctions to be adopted by the agency of the key U.N. council would be tantamount to a declaration of war.

The U has said it wants to decide the nuclear issue through multilateral talks, a rouse rejected by North Korea, which wants direct talks with the US

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