Unification Minister Chung Dong Young warned Pyongyang not to miss an opportunity to end its nuclear dispute through multilateral talks.

The minister remarks were made during a brief stop in Berlin on Friday. Chung was on his way to the Swiss alpine resort city of Davos to participate in the World Economic Forum as a special presidential envoy.

Chung admitted that securing its regime may be North Korea's top priority, but warned that the nuclear weapons program would threaten the North's regime, instead of safeguarding it.

The communist country, which fears an Iraq-style U.S. military attack, recently claimed it is a nuclear state but only for defense purposes and that it has no intention to keep nuclear weapons forever.

The CIA believes that the country has already developed one or
two crude atomic bombs and has enough weapons-grade plutonium to
make several more.

Chung warned the United States against employing a military option against the North and called on Washington to make a"forward-looking" choice. He said economic cooperation and engagement are more effective than military pressure or containment.

The visiting minister also called on North Korea to make a strategic decision to scrap its weapons program and offered massive economic aid to revive the North's sickly economy, if the impoverished state starts to give up its nuclear quest.