SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea said on Monday it wants to reach a peace treaty quickly to replace the cease-fire that ended the 1950-53 Korean War in order to build trust with the United States.
The isolated and impoverished North has made similar calls before and said that if a peace regime were reached with the United States, it would help revive dormant international talks on ending its nuclear arms programme in exchange for aid.
U.S.-led U.N. forces fighting on behalf of South Korea signed the cease-fire with North Korea and China that ended the Korean War. The two Koreas are technically still at war and position more than 1 million troops near their border.
"If confidence is to be built between the DPRK (North Korea) and the U.S., it is essential to conclude a peace treaty for terminating the state of war, a root cause of the hostile relations, to begin with," the North's KCNA news agency quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying.
"The removal of the barrier of such discrimination and distrust as sanctions may soon lead to the opening of the six-party talks," it said.
North Korea said a few weeks ago it was ready to end its year-long boycott of six-country nuclear talks, but analysts said the North may try to attach conditions to its return to the discussions among the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States.
(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Nick Macfie)
