BEIJING, Nov 17, 2007 (AFP) - North Korea is fully cooperating with US weapons experts supervising the disabling of the communist country's principal nuclear site, New Zealand's foreign minister Winston Peters said Saturday.

'They receive full cooperation at this point of time,' said Peters, who is in China following a two-day visit to Pyongyang.

DAMASCUS, Oct 22, 2007 (AFP) - A top North Korean official met Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad on Monday on a visit designed to build ties between Damascus and Pyongyang.

The visit by Choe Thae-Bok, chairman of communist North Korea's Supreme People's Assembly, follows reports -- strongly denied by both countries -- that Pyongyang was helping Damascus develop a nuclear programme.

SEOUL, Oct 22, 2007 (AFP) - North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il Monday congratulated Hu Jintao on his re-election to China's top posts and said the friendship between the two countries would continue to grow.

'Your re-election... was an expression of the trust of your party, army and people in you,' Kim said in the message carried by the North's official Korean Central News Agency.

Kim added that 'the traditional friendship between the DPRK (North Korea) and China will continue to grow stronger and develop thanks to the concerted efforts of the two parties and peoples...'

DAMASCUS, Oct 21, 2007 (AFP) - A top North Korean official was holding talks in Syria on Sunday, amid reports -- strongly denied by both countries -- that Pyongyang was helping Damascus develop a nuclear programme.

Syrian Prime Minister Mohammed Naji Otri met Choe Thae-Bok, chairman of communist North Korea's Supreme People's Assembly discussed efforts to boost relations between the two nations, the official SANA news agency reported.

The two men spoke of the 'cooperative relations and historic friendship' between their nations, it said.

SEOUL, Oct 19, 2007 (AFP) - North and South Korea plan to hold talks this month to pave way for the inter-Korean prime ministers' meeting in November, a top government official said Friday.

Officials from both Koreas planned to meet at North Korea's Kaesong City near the inter-Korean border to make preparations for the prime ministers' talks, such as setting the agenda, Unification Minister Lee Jae-Joung said.

No date has been set for the talks.

WASHINGTON, Oct 18, 2007 (AFP) - US experts are to begin disabling North Korea's nuclear weapons arsenal in about three weeks, the State Department said Thursday following talks in Pyongyang.

The timeframe was given by Sung Kim, the head of the US State Department's Korea desk, who completed talks with North Korean officials on the nuclear disablement mission, said Tom Casey, a department spokesman.

Kim and his 20-member interagency team that visited North Korea were on their way home after a one week pre-disablement mission, Casey said.

BEIJING, Oct 18, 2007 (AFP) - A group of US experts left North Korea Thursday after a week of negotiations on dismantling the isolated Stalinist nation's atomic facilities, including the key Yongbyon nuclear reactor.

Sung Kim, the head of the US State Department's Korea desk, arrived in Beijing following discussions linked to the six-party talks on ending North Korea's nuclear weapons programmes.

SEOUL, Oct 18, 2007 (AFP) - South Korean Foreign Minister Song Min-Soon on Thursday cautioned that a peace agreement to formally end the war with the North would not come quickly.

'We cannot say peace will come right after tomorrow,' Song said in a report to parliament, according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency.

'At the end of a long process comes a peace mechanism and a peace accord, based on which a declaration of ending the war would follow.'

SEOUL, Oct 18, 2007 (AFP) - North Korea may face a new famine next year as floods and bad weather aggravate its already chronic food shortages, a leading expert warned Thursday.

Floods and storms, followed by outbreaks of blight and damage by insects, deprived the impoverished nation of some 10 percent of its autumn harvest this year, said Kwon Tae-Jin, who is research director of the Korea Rural Economic Institute.

WASHINGTON, Oct 17, 2007 (AFP) - US President George W. Bush on Wednesday warned North Korea that 'there will be consequences' if it fails to live up to an agreement to dismantle its nuclear weapons programs.

'If they renege on their promises -- and they have declared that they will show us weapons and get rid of the weapons programs as well stop proliferation -- if they don't fulfill that which they've said, we are now in a position to make sure that they understand that there will be consequences,' he said.