SEOUL, AUG 20: North Korean leader Kim Jong-II has called for a peace treaty with the United States and hinted at resuming suspended inter-Korean dialogue, the state news agency reported today.

But analysts here said Kim's proposals showed no real change in Pyongyang's policies aimed at bypassing Seoul in talks on the future of the divided Korean peninsula.

``The question of easing tension and removing the danger of war in our country can be settled, before all else, when the United States gives up its hostile policy against our republic and a peace treaty is concluded,'' Kim said in a 24-page text carried by the North's Korean central new agency KCNA.

Monitors here said KCNA carried excerpts from Kim's work last week to mark the 52nd anniversary of Korea's liberation from Japan's colonial rule on August 15, 1945. But this was the first time Pyongyang had disclosed the full text of his work.

It was released a day after a ground-breaking ceremony for two nuclear reactors to be built in North Korea under a deal between Pyonyang and Washington aimed at easing tension on the peninsula.

The International Monetary Fund will hold its first talks in North Korea this month, although sources said that government had not launched a formal bid for IMF membership.

The sources said a fact-finding mission was expected to spend up to two weeks in Pyongyang at the invitation of the authorities there. They would talk to officials and brief them on IMF requirements if they wanted to apply to join.

``There has been no application for membership, but there has been interest in exploring the issue,'' sources said.

The IMF, founded after World War II, was long regarded by Moscow and its Soviet bloc allies as an exploitative tool of the capitalist west and Pyongyang too stayed away.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.