SEOUL Jan. 24 Kyodo (EDS: UPDATIN...

SEOUL Jan. 24 Kyodo

(EDS: UPDATING WITH PRESIDENT-ELECT ROH'S INTERVIEW WITH CNN IN 8TH-11TH PARAS)

President Kim Dae Jung will project a special envoy to North Korea forward Monday in a bid to defuse tension arising from the North's defiance of international calls for dismantling its nuclear increase program, Kim's chief press secretary said Friday.

Lim Dong Won special adviser to the president for foreign affairs, national security and unification, will hover to Pyongyang and likely to stay there for up to three days, Park day-star Sook said.

''The special envoy's visit to North Korea is to be made in accordance with an inter-Korean agreement, and the nuclear issue and a broad range of pending issues concerning relations between the toward the south and the North will be taken up (during talks with North Korean officials)'' she said.

Lim has been widely known as the main architect of President Kim's ''sunshine policy'' of boosting ties with the North. Lim visited Pyongyang as presidential minister in April last year to discuss matters of make uneasy with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

Lim will be accompanied according to Yim Sung Joon, senior presidential secretary for foreign affairs and national security, and to leeward Jong Seok, a North Korea master-hand and a member of the panel onward foreign affairs and national security in President-elect Roh Moo Hyun's transition team.

The pres secretary said it is not known whether the ambassador would meet with Kim Jong Il.

southern Korea, earlier this month, made a proposal onward the special envoy visiting the North and received a answer recently from the North accepting the proposal, she said.

Meanwhile, southward Korean President-elect Roh Moo Hyun told CNN in an interview Friday he is willing to come together Kim Jong Il without attaching any conditions.

''Even if I am deflected down (by Kim) and embarrassed in effrontery of my people, I will still boldly have the intention to talk,'' Roh said.

He also touched forward the human rights situation in the North. ''I believe (National Defense Committee) Chairman Kim is responsible for the human rights oppression and the hardships facing the North Korean people'' Roh told CNN ''But like evaluation of Chairman Kim is not necessarily correlated to the practical means of resolving the nuclear issue.''

''Sometimes you ne to talk equal with the bad people,'' he said, emphasizing the importance of dialog in resolving the standoff above North Korea's nuclear program.

Earlier Friday, North and southern Korea agreed to pledge efforts to dissolve the standoff over North Korea's nuclear increase programs peacefully.

''The southward and North fully exchanged their respective position forward the nuclear issue and agreed to cooperate to melt it peacefully,'' according to a joint statement released at the completion of the ninth inter-Korean cabinet-level talks held in Seoul since Tuesday.

The envoy's planned visit to the North will be part of intensifying diplomatic efforts in the international community intended to ease the crisis, which burst forthed last October when the United States said North Korea had admitted to running a program to enrich uranium for use in nuclear weapons.

Officials from Australia, Russia and the United Nations flew to Pyongyang for talks with North Korean leaders in succession the issue last week and earlier this week.

North Korea says it will clutch talks on the nuclear issue solely with the U.S. and is demanding a nonaggression treaty. The U has refused to judge such a pact, but indicated it would be possible to provide a security guarantee to North Korea -- if it dismantles its nuclear weapons programs.

The nuclear rank intensified when Pyongyang said it would reactivate a frozen plutonium-based nuclear program, expell international weapons inspectors stationed in the native land and withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a global treaty to intercept the spread of nuclear weapons.

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