The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) said on Thursday that it will discuss the proposal "reward for freeze" under any circumstances on the coming meetting of the working group of six-party talks held in Beijing.

"It is very important for the meeting of the working group to adopt proper agenda items to attain its purpose," a DPRK Foreign Ministry spokesman said in response to a question raised by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) concerning the meeting of the working group of the six-party talks to be opened in Beijing on May 12 under an agreement reached at the second round of the six-party talks.

"There exists no confidence between the DPRK and the US and Washington is not yet ready to accept the proposal of a package solution based on the principle of simultaneous actions all at once," said the spokesman.

The spokesman said that a bright prospect will be opened for the solution of the nuclear issue if Pyongyang scraps its nuclear weapons program in return for Washington's commitment to renounce its hostile policy toward the DPRK on the principle of "verbal commitment" and "action for action".

"The U.S. and the countries concerned should make compensation for DPRK's freeze of its nuclear program," the spokesman added.

"The U.S. seems to stick to its stand to demand Pyongyang's complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement (CVID) of its nuclear program. But that will only throw a higher hurdle in the way of the talks," the spokesman said.

The spokesman emphasized that if the U.S. insisted on this stand of CVID, the DPRK does not feel any need to sit at the negotiating table with the US.

"The DPRK will participate in the comming meeting with patience and magnanimity. But any efforts made by it alone are not enough to make the meeting successful. Everything will depend on the US attitude," added the spokesman.

The nuclear standoff began in October 2002 when US officials charged that the DPRK had a secret nuclear program in violation ofan international agreement in 1994.

The DPRK says it will dismantle its suspected nuclear facilities only if the United States provides economic aid and makes a nonaggression pledge. The United States demands that the DPRK first scrap all its nuclear facilities.

Last August, China, the DPRK, the United States, Russia, South Korea and Japan held the first round of the six-party talks aimed to resolve the nuclear issue in Beijing.

The second round of the talks were held in Beijing on Feb. 25-28 and they agreed to meet again before July and decided to create working groups to resolve obstacles to future high-level talks.