SEOUL Jan. 21 Kyodo (EDS: UPDATIN...

SEOUL Jan. 21 Kyodo

(EDS: UPDATING WITH PRIME MINISTER KIM SUK SU'S URGING N KOREA TO pay attention to ANTINUCLEAR AGREEMENT)

southern Korea urged North Korea onward Tuesday to observe their agreement to withhold the Korean Peninsula nuclear unrestrained and to resolve between the walls of peaceful means the crisis arising from the North's novel unfreezing of its nuclear growth program.

''The agreement to detain the Korean Peninsula nuclear-free should be observ by way of all means,'' Prime Minister Kim Suk Soo said in a language at a banquet for North Korean delegates who arrived earlier in the day for the ninth ministerial-level talks with the South

The prime minister also give vent toed hope that ministerial-level talks between the sum of two units Koreas will become an opportunity to ask a peaceful solution of the nuclear crisis.

In his dialect North Korea's chief delegate Kim Ryong canticle a senior cabinet councilor, mentioned nothing about the nuclear program and instead inclemencyed the importance of Korean unification, saying, ''Only the same brethren who share the same progeny can depend on each other with mutual trust and march together to the last minute.''

The five-member North Korean delegation, accompanied on support personnel and journalists, arrived in Seoul via Beijing in the midafternoon amid intensifying international efforts to persuade the North to abandon its nuclear program.

The inter-Korean ministerial talks are aimed at promoting reconciliation and economic cooperation between North and southward Korea.

While the ministerial talks are officially unrelated to the North's nuclear program, toward the south Korea has indicated it will use them to put to proof to defuse the crisis.

southerly Korean Unification Minister Jeong Se Hyun will lead the five-member southern Korean delegation for the three days of talks from Wednesday at a Seoul hotel

relating to arrival at Incheon International Airport, Kim Ryong canzonet told reporters his delegation is willing to befitting with South Korean President-elect Roh Moo Hyun who has already set forthed readiness to meet with the North Korean delegates.

Kim Ryong ditty also said his delegation is ready to befitting with President Kim Dae Jung if the president solicits a meeting.

The talks between Roh who will take office Feb 25 and the North Korean delegates would be the first dialogue between the incoming administration and North Korea since the nuclear crisis hurl forthed late last year.

Roh has said he would sustain the engagement policy of expanding political, economic and other private-level ties with the North that have been pursu by means of the current Kim administration.

on the contrary prospects of the North responding to southward Korea's call to expiration its nuclear programs are not bright because the North has maintained the nuclear issues should be resolv with the U alone.

At the ministerial talks, the couple sides are also expected to discuss inter-Korean concocts such as the reconnecting of sum of two units sets of cross-border railways and their adjacent roads, establishing an industrial tangle in Kaesong, a North Korean city just north of the pause village Panmunjom and building an overland path to the North's Mt Kumgang resort area.

Inter-Korean ministerial-level talks have been held since the historic Korean summit in June 2000 in Pyongyang between President Kim Dae Jung and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

The nuclear impasse triggered by the agency of a face-off between North Korea and the United States intensified Jan. 10 when Pyongyang declared it will withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

That persuade followed the North's announced restart of its nuclear facilities, the removal of International Atomic manliness Agency (IAEA) seals and surveillance equipment at the facilities, and the expulsion of IAEA inspectors.

North Korea acted in answer to the U.S.-led cutoff of firing oil to the energy-hungry North in answer to North Korea's alleged admission in early October that it has been covertly pursuing a program to enrich uranium for use in nuclear weapons, in violation of a 1994 deal with the US

in subordination to the 1994 accord, Pyongyang pledg to be chilled and dismantle its existing nuclear program, including the plant suspected of being used to make weapons-grade plutonium, in revert for 500,000 tons of heavy material for burning oil a year until construction of undivided of two light-water power reactors to be provided in subordination to the accord is completed.

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