North Korea's Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that a non-aggression treaty demonstrating that the United States had made a "switchover in its hostile policy" was the only way to resolve the nuclear crisis.

The statement, issued two weeks before six-country talks on the nuclear crisis are expected to convene in Beijing, rejected ideas floated by the United States and others that fell short of a non-aggression pact, including written U.S. pledges not to attack and talk of collective regional guarantees for the regime.

The North's spokesman, in a lengthy statement published by the North's official KCNA news agency, also dismissed talk of a multi-nation inspection regime for its nuclear facilities as a U.S. ruse to disarm the communist state.

"It is clear that as long as the U.S. insists on its hostile policy toward the DPRK, the latter will not abandon its nuclear deterrent force," said the statement. DPRK stands for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

"Therefore, the U.S. switchover in its hostile policy toward the DPRK comes as a precondition for the solution to the nuclear issue," said the statement.

"It will be considered that the U.S. has practically given up its hostile policy toward the DPRK when a non-aggression treaty with legal binding is concluded and diplomatic relations are established between the DPRK and the U.S," the ministry said.

Six-way talks in Beijing to defuse the crisis are expected to begin on August 27, although the date has not been finalized. The talks will bring together the United States, the two Koreas, China, Russia and Japan.

The Beijing talks will follow months of tension that began when Washington announced last October that Pyongyang was pursuing a covert nuclear weapons program.

The crisis escalated early this year after North Korea expelled U.N. nuclear inspectors, pulled out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and restarted a mothballed reactor at Yongbyon, north of the capital, Pyongyang.

At an initial round of three-way talks in Beijing involving the United States, North Korea and China in April, the North's delegate told his U.S. counterpart that Pyongyang already had nuclear bombs and was prepared to make more.

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