N. Korean Disarmament Closer

South Korea's president expects a positive response from North Korea to a new disarmament proposal presented by the United States last week.

Â"Things are moving in the right direction,Â" President Kim Dae-jung said at a news conference Tuesday.

U.S. special envoy William Perry visited North Korea for four days last week and urged the isolated communist country to abandon its missile and nuclear weapons programs in exchange for economic and diplomatic benefits.

Kim could not give a definite answer on when North Korea will respond to the U.S. proposal. But he said he is optimistic and that Perry, a former U.S. defense secretary, apparently made progress during his visit.

Â"Mr. Perry listened to everything the North Koreans had to say. Some of them said violent things, but Mr. Perry listened," Kim said, without elaborating.

Kim spoke upon returning home from a six-day trip to Russia and Mongolia, where he sought support for his policy of seeking greater engagement with North Korea.

Local news reports said Tuesday that South and North Korea were close to an agreement to begin high-level talks on easing tensions on the divided Korean peninsula. Government officials would only confirm that negotiators from both sides have been meeting in Beijing.

Previous proposals for such talks failed to materialize because of North Korea's demand that the United States first pull its 37,000 troops out of South Korea. South Korea has rejected that demand.

The two Koreas technically are still at war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.