North Korea Weighs Return to Nuke Talks

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il told China's premier today that the North was prepared to return to multi-nation disarmament talks depending on progress in its two-way negotiations with the US. Kim's comments were the clearest sign yet that Pyongyang was readying to resume the six-nation talks it withdrew from after conducting missile tests in April and a nuclear test in May.

Kim said North Korea "is willing to attend multilateral talks, including the six-party talks, depending on the progress in its talks with the United States," China's Xinhua News Agency reported. In the North's Korean Central News Agency version,Kim told Wen Jiabao that denuclearization remained a goal and that historically hostile relations with the US "should be converted into peaceful ties through bilateral talks without fail." (More North Korea stories.)