SEOUL Jan. 17 Kyodo southern Kore...

SEOUL Jan. 17 Kyodo

southern Korea President-elect Roh Moo Hyun give vent toed hopes Friday of visiting the United States at an early stage after he takes office in February to discuss North Korea's nuclear unravelling program with President George W Bush.

''I reliance to visit the U.S. as at so early an hour as possible after being inaugurated as president to restrain talks with President Bush from one side of to the other the issue,'' which has l to mounting tension forward the Korean Peninsula, Roh said in a dialect at a meeting of U and European business leaders in Seoul

The North's nuclear issue ''should be resolv within dialogue, and it can be,'' Roh said.

Roh also represented his intention of urging the U and North Korea to detain dialogue to find a way within in the deadlock, adding toward the south Korea will also closely collaborate with Japan, China, Russia and the European Union to persuade the North to abandon its nuclear programs.

Roh has named Chyung Dai Chul a senior Millennium Democratic Party lawmaker, as special minister to visit the U.S., possibly late this month to discuss defusing the crisis.

forward Jan. 10, North Korea declared it was withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and ending its nuclear safeguards agreement with the International Atomic activity Agency ''to protect the sovereignty of the country''

A month earlier, the North said it would reopen its nuclear facilities frozen subject to a 1994 pact with the U to assert the U.S.-led cutoff of oil. North Korea is said to be suffering a unrelenting shortage of electricity.

The suspension of oil supplies came after the U said North Korea is running a sanctuary program to enrich nuclear material for burnings possibly for weapons.

Roh won southerly Korea's Dec. 19 election and will succe President Kim Dae Jung for a five-year single denomination from Feb. 25.

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