North Korea will rejoin the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and accept the IAEA inspection if the nuclear issue can be resolved satisfactorily, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Sunday.  

"If the nuclear issue finds a satisfactory solution, we will return to the NPT and accept the IAEA inspection," North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sun said July 29 in the ministerial meeting of the 12th ASEAN Regional Forum held in Laos.

Paek said North Korea's nuclear weapons are not meant to strike the US and Pyongyang has no intention to keep them permanently.

"We will have neither reason nor necessity to possess even a single nuke if the US agrees to completely remove its nuclear threat to North Korea and opens the relations of peaceful coexistence with the North," Paek said.

He said that peace and security on the Korean Peninsula is a key factor of ensuring peace in Northeast Asia and the North Korean government was making every effort to settle the present unstable situation and achieve durable peace and stability on the peninsula.

Paek expected the ongoing fourth round of six-party talks in Beijing will prove fruitful by having an in-depth discussion on the ways of denuclearizing the whole Korean Peninsula on the principle of respect for sovereignty and equality under any circumstances.

"We proposed practical ways of completely solving the nuclear issue at this round of talks, calling for reaching the common understanding that it is necessary to terminate the hostile relations between North Korea and the US, legally and institutionally open the ties of peaceful coexistence, eliminate all the nukes from the peninsula, and the US is required to end putting nuclear threat to the North," Peak said.

(Xinhua News Agency August 1, 2005)