North Korea must act to scrap nuclear weapons: U.S.

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea needs to take concrete steps toward dismantling its nuclear weapons program at six-way talks next week in China, the chief U.S. envoy to the discussions said on Saturday.

"Clearly they have got to abandon all their nuclear programs per the agreement. And we want to get a good start on that. We need some things to happen on the ground," Christopher Hill told Reuters.

Hill was going into the talks among the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States that open on Thursday in Beijing with a degree of optimism. He will meet government officials in Seoul and stop in Tokyo before heading to Beijing.

"Obviously our hope is to begin to implement the September agreement," Hill told reporters upon arrival in Seoul in reference to an agreement reached in 2005 where Pyongyang agreed to scrap its nuclear weapons program in exchange for aid and pledges not to attack it.

"We had hoped to do that in December (2006) and I think we do have some reason to believe we can make some progress on that," Hill said referring to the last session of the six-way talks.

Recent contact between North Korea and the United States that included a meeting between Hill and the North's top nuclear envoy last month in Berlin has raised hope for the prospects of the nuclear discussions.

Hill told Reuters he has been in contact indirectly with North Korea's nuclear envoy through the North Korean mission to the United Nations in New York.

North Korea has said it was unthinkable for it to scrap its nuclear plans until the United States ended a crackdown on firms it suspects of aiding Pyongyang in illicit activity such as counterfeiting. The U.S. move has severely hurt the North's international finances, analysts said.

Talks in Beijing between U.S. Treasury Department and North Korean officials seeking to resolve the matter that led a Macao bank to freeze $24 million in North Korean funds ended on Wednesday with no signs of a breakthrough.

"I hope the DPRK (North Korea) sees the value of those discussions because I think a lot of what the DPRK needs to do is to get to begin to work on getting a better reputation in banking circles, and to get out of some practices, which I think have been very harmful to their reputation," Hill said.