North Korea ready for n-test halt

Kim and Russian President Dmitry Medevdev met Wednesday on a military base near the city of Ulan-Ude in eastern Siberia in Kims first trip to Russia since 2002.

The six-sided nuclear talks have been long-stalled,but Kims Russia trip comes as his country pushes to restart them. South Korea and Washington have demanded that the North first show its sincerity on fulfilling past nuclear commitments.

The Korean peninsula has seen more than a year of tension during which the North shelled a South Korean island and allegedly torpedoed a South Korean warship.

Medvedev spokeswoman Natalya Timakova was quoted by the ITAR-Tass news agency as saying that Kim expressed readiness to return to the six-sided talks without preconditions and in the course of the talks,North Korea will be ready to resolve the question of imposing a moratorium on tests and production of nuclear missile weapons.