Wu will meet with the North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and the first deputy minister of foreign affairs Kang Suk Joo on Thursday to discuss North Korea's nuclear weapons crisis and promote a second-round of the six-party talks. Wu's visit is the first made by such a high-ranking Chinese official since the former President Jiang Zemin went to Pyongyang in September 2001.

North Korea and China will discuss specifications for the proposed written guarantee of the North's security, which U.S President George W. Bush said last Saturday he would accept within a multilateral framework.

In the Chinese delegation is Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who headed the Chinese delegation during the six-way talks. He is expected to have a separate meeting with his North Korean counterpart and discuss the schedule for the next round of six-way talks. ITAR-TASS, the Russian news agency, quoted a North Korean diplomat and said that North Korea had begun full preparations for the next round of six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear arms program.

The North Korean diplomat had hinted that a key stumbling block to the six-party talks had been removed because North Korea had accepted the possibility of an international guarantee for its security instead of a nonaggression agreement, according to a statement released by North Korea's Foreign Ministry, ITAR-TASS said.

The South Korean government will discuss the result of Wu's visit to North Korea after Wu returns to China on Friday, and will work to hold the six party talks as soon as possible. (Kwon Kyung-bok, kkb@chosun.com )