SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North Korea told a visiting US congressional delegation that it is ready to return to six-party nuclear talks and offered to become a "friend" of the United States if Washington doesn't slander the rule of totalitarian leader Kim Jong Il.

The overture yesterday was highly unusual. North Korean propagandists have honed anti-Americanism into a near religion and regularly exhort their people to prepare for a possible war with "US imperialists."

The offer came shortly after the six-member bipartisan US congressional delegation concluded talks with senior communist officials in Pyongyang. Republican Rep Curt Weldon, who led the group, called the trip an "overwhelming success," and said in Seoul that North Korea appeared ready to negotiate "in a matter of weeks."

The United States, North and South Korea, China, Japan and Russia have struggled to arrange a new round of six-party talks aimed at persuading the North to abandon its nuclear weapons programmes. Three prior rounds, hosted by China since 2003, made no breakthroughs.

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