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SEOUL - UN chief Ban Ki-moon offered Wednesday to intervene personally with North Korea to try to coax it back to six-nation nuclear disarmament talks.
"I will try to find a breakthrough by any means necessary, and I have plans to make direct contact with North Korea if necessary," Yonhap news agency quoted the secretary general as saying during a visit to his homeland South Korea.
Ban said "nothing has been decided" and he has no specific plans as yet to get involved.
The UN chief, a former South Korean foreign minister, has previously offered to visit Pyongyang to try to break the nuclear deadlock.
The talks grouping the two Koreas, China, Russia, the United States and Japan became deadlocked last December.
After the UN Security Council censured its April 5 long-range rocket launch, the North announced it was quitting the forum and restarting its plutonium-producing programme.
It staged its second nuclear test on May 25.
A North Korean envoy to the United Nations said last month Pyongyang was, however, open to direct talks with Washington. The US has said this is possible within the context of the six-party forum.
Ban was speaking during a visit to the Seoul hospital where former president Kim Dae-Jung, 83, is in intensive care. He sent good wishes for Kim's recovery during a meeting at the hospital with the ex-president's wife and associates.
- AFP /ls
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