North Korea has reaffirmed its call for a peace treaty with the US, ahead of the resumption of talks aimed at ending the nuclear standoff on the peninsula. Pyongyang said in a statement that a full treaty replacing the armistice signed at the end of the Korean War in 1953 was needed to resolve the crisis. Six-nation talks are due to resume in Beijing on Tuesday. North Korea walked out of the talks in February 2004, and has since admitted stockpiling atomic weapons. The North has in the past demanded a non-aggression pact with the US - but Washington refuses to talk until North Korea agrees to shut down its weapons programme. The Korean War ended with an armistice - not a peace treaty - and thus the peninsula is technically still at war. List of demands:
In a statement issued on Friday, North Korea's foreign ministry said: "Replacing the cease-fire mechanism by a peace mechanism on the Korean Peninsula would lead to putting an end to the US hostile policy" towards the North.
It added that a peace treaty would "automatically result in the denuclearisation of the peninsula".
N Korea announced earlier this month that it would return to talks
On Thursday a North Korean official had said that "not a single nuclear weapon will be needed for us if the US nuclear threat is removed".
He also demanded that Washington stay out of Pyongyang's "economic co-operation with other countries".
He then repeated calls for North Korea to be removed from a US list of states that sponsor terrorism, and that all sanctions against it be lifted.