South Korean president-elect Roh Moo-hyun urged the United States on Friday to open talks with communist North Korea to try to solve the nuclear crisis on the peninsula. In a sign Washington is eager to end a standoff that has become a distraction from its campaign to disarm Iraq, a senior U.S. official said earlier the United States was prepared to make "utmost efforts" to ensure a peaceful solution.

Adding to the flurry of diplomatic activity to calm an escalating crisis that has raised fears about just how it will end, a Russian envoy left for Pyongyang on Thursday, saying he was optimistic about his delicate mission.

"South Korea needs to convince North Korea to give up its nuclear development program," Roh told a gathering of U.S. and European business leaders in Seoul.

"In order to convince North Korea, there needs to be dialogue between North Korea and the United States. I would like to urge the United States to actively pursue dialogue with North Korea."

The White House had no immediate comment on Roh's proposal.

The crisis erupted last October when Washington said Pyongyang had admitted to pursuing a nuclear weapons program and it escalated as North Korea expelled International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors, pulled out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and threatened to resume missile tests.

Returning to his campaign theme that Seoul's 50-year-old alliance with the United States needed to be updated to reflect South Korea's vibrant democracy and an economy that is the world's 13th largest, Roh said recent anti-U.S. demonstrations were "voices aspiring for a more mature relationship."

DOING THE UTMOST

North Korea, set on edge a year ago when President Bush bracketed it with Iraq and Iran in an "axis of evil," has made clear that the crisis could be solved only through talks with the United States.

U.S. officials have repeatedly said they want the standoff resolved peacefully.

"The international community is very united on the need to resolve this," U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told reporters after a closed-door briefing with senators about North Korea.

"We're of a mind to resolve it peacefully and to that end we're prepared to make utmost efforts."

After initially taking a hard line toward North Korea -- with some U.S. officials hinting at the possibility of economic sanctions -- the United States last week shifted gear and said it would talk to Pyongyang about ending its nuclear programs.
Bush said on Tuesday he would reconsider a "bold approach" toward Pyongyang that could eventually include economic, energy and food assistance if it were to end the nuclear programs.

Pyongyang swiftly dismissed as "pie in the sky" U.S. offers of possible food and energy aid if the impoverished North would halt its nuclear program.

HONEST BROKER

A flurry of diplomatic initiatives has followed North Korea's decision to pull out of the global treaty to prevent the spread of nuclear arms, with an Australian team now in Pyongyang.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov, due in Beijing on Friday en route for Pyongyang, said he did not expect to resolve the crisis fully.

Moscow's relations with Pyongyang, close under the Soviet period, cooled in the 1990s. But ties have improved under President Vladimir Putin, who has met North Korea's reclusive leader Kim Jong-il three times in two years.

Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the IAEA, whose monitors were evicted from a North Korean nuclear plant after Pyongyang announced it would reactivate the mothballed facility, said Losyukov's visit could be key.

After visiting South Korea and then China, one of Pyongyang's closest remaining friends, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly said on Thursday the international community agreed the Korean peninsula must be free of nuclear weapons, but he held out little hope of a speedy outcome.

PHOTO CAPTION

A South Korean soldier aims during an exercise in Heonggye, east of Seoul, Jan. 16, 2003. North Korea, embroiled in a nuclear standoff with the United States, said that resentment was growing, with mass anti-U.S. rallies being staged all over the country. (Rhee Dong-Min/Re