SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea seeks to resume talks with the United States on easing tensions on the divided peninsula, a South Korean official said Saturday.
South Korean envoy Lim Dong-won told a news conference after a visit to Pyongyang, the North's capital, that the North also wants to revive reconciliation efforts with the South.
A White House spokesman traveling with President Bush in Crawford, Texas, said he was withholding comment until the United States hears directly and officially from Pyongyang what the regime's intentions are.
Last June, Bush offered to resume Clinton-era security negotiations but until now, the North had not indicated a willingness to accept.
Tense relations deteriorated further after Bush labeled North Korea part of "an axis of evil" in January.
The United States is concerned about North Korea's nuclear capability, its long-range missiles, and its military buildup near the border with South Korea.
North Korea is expected to use resumed contacts with the United States to extract economic and diplomatic concessions vital to rebuilding the economy.
According to Lim, the reclusive North Korean leader Kim Jong Il said he would accept a proposed visit by Jack Pritchard, a U.S. special envoy who met North Korean diplomats in the United States last month. The date of the visit will be set by the two sides, Lim said.
Lim further said Kim Jong Il also responded "positively" to a message he conveyed from South Korean President Kim Dae-jung urging the North to break out of isolation and build ties with the outside world.
The announcement came as a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea, Don Gregg, visited the North. Gregg served in Seoul as ambassador under Bush's father. The State Department said he was not carrying an official message.
The Koreas were divided in 1945 and face each other across a sealed and heavily armed border. About 37,000 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War.
Inter-Korean ties warmed after Kim Dae-jung traveled to the North for a historic summit in 2000, but exchanges and talks designed to bring the nations closer together subsequently ground to a halt amid U.S.-North Korea tension.
A joint statement issued simultaneously in the two Korean capitals Saturday called for reunions of separated family members — an important part of the reconciliation process — to resume on April 28.
The Koreas also have agreed to resume work on reconnecting a cross-border rail line that was launched in 2000 and build a second rail line across the border. A North Korean economic survey team will visit South Korea in May, it said.
Casting a shadow on his bright assessment of his talks in North Korea, Lim said Pyongyang officials were unmoved when he urged the country to open its suspected nuclear weapons program to outside inspections.
In a 1994 deal with the United States, North Korea agreed to freeze two nuclear power reactors suspected of being used to develop nuclear weapons in return for two replacement reactors of a type that cannot be used for that purpose.
Citing a delay in the $4.6 billion reactor project, North Korea has rejected U.N. inspections of nuclear sites.
The CIA suspects that North Korea may have extracted enough plutonium before the 1994 freeze to make one or two atomic bombs.
North Korea is also believed to have stockpiles of thousands of tons of chemical weapons, as well as missiles that can reach the western U.S. mainland.