A top Russian envoy said today, from the North Korean capital Pyongyang, that North Korea had expressed the desire for a swift, negotiated resolution of the growing dispute over its nuclear programme, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

China today urged all countries involved in six-nation talks aimed at dismantling North Korea’s nuclear programme to work harder and to use the talks as an opportunity to end the “cold war state” on the Korean peninsula.

The fate of four contested islands in the fertile fishing waters of the Sea of Okhotsk was expected to dominate talks today between Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.