North Korea ? North Korea is in the final stage of restoring its nuclear facilities, a news report said today, as leader Kim Jong Il expressed a conditional willingness to end Pyongyang’s boycott of international nuclear talks.

South Korean and U.S. intelligence authorities reached the conclusion after scrutinizing about 10 atomic facilities in North Korea since April when the communist regime vowed to restart its nuclear program in anger over a U.N. rebuke of its long-range rocket launch.

Pyongyang claimed the launch was a peaceful attempt to put a satellite into orbit, but the liftoff was widely condemned as a test of the North’s long-range missile technology.

The report came as North Korean leader Kim Jong Il told Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao that his country was prepared to return to six-party nuclear disarmament talks depending on progress in its two-way negotiations with the United States.