SKorea's top diplomat urges NKorea to disarm

South Korea's foreign minister called North Korea's uranium enrichment program "worrisome" and pressed the nation Monday to take real steps toward nuclear disarmament.

Last month, North Korea told the U.N. Security Council that it was in the final stages of enriching uranium, a process that would give the communist regime a second way to make atomic bombs in addition to its plutonium-based program.

Although it could not be verified independently, the claim has raised concerns that the North may add uranium-based weapons to enlarge its stockpile of nuclear bombs made from plutonium.

Analysts said at the time that the announcement was aimed at getting the U.S. to accept its demand for direct talks.

On Monday, South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan said the North's new nuclear program is "very worrisome" and said he believes the issue could be separately discussed at the United Nations. He did not elaborate.

North Korea has been reaching out to Seoul and Washington in recent months after months of raising tensions over its nuclear and missile programs, though it conducted short-range missile tests and warned of a naval clash with the South last week.

Yu was skeptical about North Korea's conciliatory gestures.

"There are no real grounds as yet to determine what this softening stance means and if that indicates a fundamental change in its position in the nuclear issue," Yu told a Seoul forum.

Yu said North Korea must first take "substantial" disarmament measures and promptly return to stalled six-party disarmament talks involving the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan.

He said South Korea remains open to dialogue with the North but will continue to enforce sanctions on the country for its May nuclear test to get the North to return to the talks.

North Korea has offered to resume key joint projects with South Korea and has proposed direct talks with the U.S., but neither initiative has yet been accepted. Washington and Seoul have also shown no signs of easing pressure on North Korea to disarm through the U.N. sanctions.

Kim Yong-hyun, a professor at Seoul's Dongguk University, said the North's recent saber rattling appeared aimed at bolstering its bargaining chips ahead of possible talks with the U.S. "North Korea wants to show it also has hard-line cards," he said.

A senior North Korean nuclear negotiator plans to visit the United States to attend a private security forum this month. The State Department approved a rare visa for Ri Gun, the director general of American affairs at North Korea's Foreign Ministry, Kim Myong Gil, a minister at North Korea's United Nations mission in New York, told The Associated Press on Friday.

A U.S. official said Ri would likely discuss nuclear matters with a senior U.S. diplomat while he was in the United States. The U.S. official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic issues.