Seoul, South Korea ? North Korean leader Kim Jong Il said Friday he will return to six-party talks focused on his country’s nuclear program next month “if it is certain that the United States is respecting the North as a partner,” according to South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong Young.

After a five-hour meeting Friday with the reclusive leader, Chung said Kim indicated willingness to negotiate the elimination of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. “We were going to stand up against the United States for self-protective reasons since they look down upon us, but we have not given up nor rejected the six-party talks,” Chung quoted Kim as saying.

Chung said Kim added that “the denuclearization of the peninsula remains valid and is also a testament left by my father Kim Il Sung,” referring to the 1992 agreement between the two Koreas signed by his late father and founder of the communist state.

Chung left Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, after leading a government delegation marking the anniversary of a landmark summit between Kim and former South Korean President Kim Dae Jung in June 2000.

Once the nuclear talks are resolved, Kim said, his country will rejoin the Non-Proliferation Treaty and accept inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, according to Chung. “There is no reason to keep nuclear weapons, not even one,” Chung recalled Kim as saying. “I will open it all. They can come and see.”

IAEA inspectors were expelled from North Korea on Dec. 31, 2002, just days after Pyongyang announced that it will withdraw from the global treaty against the spread of nuclear arms.

North Korea’s response came a day after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called on the North to set a date and commit to discuss dismantling its nuclear program at the six-party talks involving North and South Korea, the United States, China, Russia and Japan. The Pyongyang government has boycotted the talks for nearly a year, charging that the Bush administration has a hostile policy toward the communist state.