North Korean leader ready for talks on any issue - Carter

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is willing to hold talks without preconditions on any issue, including direct talks with South Korea, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said at the end of a trip to Pyongyang to try to defuse tensions on the divided peninsula.

"He specifically told us he is prepared to meet directly with (South Korean) President Lee Myung-bak any time," Carter told a press conference in Seoul Thursday.

If Kim was willing to discuss nuclear and other military issues with South Korea it would mark a change in policy -- the North has previously said it would only discuss them with the United States.

"Chairman and General Secretary Kim Jong-il said he is willing and the people of North Korea are willing to negotiate with South Korea or with the United States or with the six powers on any subject any time and without any preconditions."

Carter and three other former state leaders -- known as the Elders -- met the North's leaders in Pyongyang during a "private" visit in which they were also due to discuss the impoverished North's pleas for food aid.

He did not meet with Kim Jong-il in person, but received a note from him as he was leaving for the airport to fly to Seoul.

The impoverished North has said it wants to rejoin six-way international aid-for-disarmament talks, which it walked out of more than two years ago over a new round of U.N. sanctions for its second nuclear test and a long-range missile test.

Earlier however, Carter on his group's website (www.theelders.org) appeared to suggest that there were preconditions for talks aimed at disarmament.

"The sticking point -- and it's a big one -- is that they won't give up their nuclear program without some kind of security guarantee from the U.S." he said.

The North has repeatedly stated it wants an assurance the United States will not attack it, as well as a peace treaty.

Some 30,000 American troops are based in South Korea, which is technically at war with its neighbour, having only signed a truce to end the 1950-53 Korean War.

"It is to my mind a tragedy that, more than 60 years after the Armistice that ended the Korean War, North and South Korea have not signed a peace treaty," Carter wrote.

(Editing by Ron Popeski)