U.S. Senator Richard Lugar says the most imperative non-proliferation task facing the next U.S. president will be the full nuclear dismantlement of North Korea.

In a speech to the National Press Club in Washington Wednesday, the Indiana Republican presented a list of 12 items towards which "the winning presidential candidate must bring the full weight of U.S. diplomatic and economic power to bear."

Of the 12 items, Lugar named the achievement of the complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of North Korea's nuclear program as Washington's foremost non-proliferation priority.

Senator Lugar, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is seen as an influential lawmaker in the formulation of diplomatic policies.

In 1991, he and former senator Sam Nunn legislated the Nunn-Lugar program, which was aimed at blocking the illegal transfer of weapons of mass destruction by the former Soviet Union to other nations, groups or individuals.