Koreas Will Talk Over Nukes

As diplomatic pressure for dialogue over its nuclear weapons program mounted around the world, North Korea agreed Thursday to attend Cabinet-level talks with South Korea — a meeting that could help solve the dangerous standoff.

Pyongyang said it wanted the talks held on Jan. 21-24, a week later than the South had proposed, according to South Korea's Unification Ministry.

The North did not explain the delay. However, it would allow the communist regime to digest what a top U.S. diplomat says during a planned visit to Seoul next week.

The South, which will host the Cabinet-level conference in Seoul, said the nuclear dispute will be on the agenda.

The talks would be the highest level of direct communication between the two governments since the North's secret weapons program was revealed in October.

Meanwhile, other countries pushed hard for a diplomatic solution.

France's foreign minister was in Beijing petitioning China — one of North Korea's few remaining allies. Japan's prime minister also left Thursday for Russia, another North Korean ally.

On Sunday, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly arrives for talks in Seoul before heading to China and Japan.

Although it says it is willing to talk with the South, Pyongyang has not yet replied to a separate offer for dialogue with the United States, which it accuses of plotting to attack it, "increasing the danger of a nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula."

The Bush administration said this week it was willing to talk to North Korea about the weapons dispute, a move that appeared to be an easing of the U.S. approach.

Previously, the United States said it would not talk to North Korea until Pyongyang scrapped its nuclear weapons program. For its part, North Korea has demanded the U.S. sign a non-aggression treaty; Washington has denied having plans for military action.

It was unclear how substantial a shift the administration had taken. Secretary of State Colin Powell said repeatedly on Dec. 29 that the U.S. was willing to talk to North Korea, just not to negotiate new inducements, reports CBS News White House Correspondent Mark Knoller. That remained the American position Wednesday.

The current dispute stated in October with revelations that North Korea had started a new uranium-enrichment program. That led the United States and its allies to cut off fuel shipments to the North, made under a 1994 deal under which North Korea padlocked its plutonium-based nuclear plant at Yongbyon.

North Korea then announced it was restarting Yongbyon.

North Korea claimed the U.S. move voided the 1994 deal, and that it had to reopen the plant to provide electricity to make up for the lost fuel shipments. Washington says the plant could instead be used to produce material for nuclear bombs.

North Korea has since expelled U.N. monitors and threatened to quit the global nuclear arms control treaty. The U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency this week decided to give the North "one more chance" to honor international safeguards obligations.

South Korean National Security Adviser Yim Sung-joon, currently in Washington, said a strong U.S.-South Korean alliance should form the basis of any resolution of the standoff, according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency.

South Korea is still torn over its relationship with America and its neighbor to the North. The presence of 37,000 U.S. troops in South Korea has been the source of friction.

There are increasing reports of U.S. troops being harassed. In one recent instance, several Korean men assaulted a U.S. military spokesman, lightly injuring him. There are anecdotes of military personnel being cursed in the street, or ignored when they try to make purchases near the main U.S. base in Seoul.

The current wave of anti-Americanism erupted after the deaths of two teenage girls who were accidentally struck by a U.S. military vehicle on a training mission in June. Two U.S. soldiers were acquitted of negligent homicide charges in U.S. military courts.

North Korea has tried to exploit the ill feeling, by calling for a Korean alliance against Washington.