North Korea has proposed working-level talks with South Korea next week.

The North's chief delegate to inter-Korean talks and Senior Cabinet Councillor, Kwon Ho-ung, made the proposal in a telephone message to his South Korean counterpart, Unification Minister Chung Dong-young, on Saturday.

Kwon proposed that both sides send a three-member delegation to the North's border city of Gaesong for two days of talks on Monday and Tuesay.

He pointed out that next month marks the fifth anniversary of the June, 2000 inter-Korean summit, but that current North-South relations have yet to depart from a path of confrontation. He went on to say that such a reality was greatly disappointing to the people of both Koreas and that both sides should revisit the spirit of the historic inter-Korean summit.

Kwon also emphasized what he called "our national ideology" in an apparent reference to the North's longstanding call to reject outside interference in the pursuit of inter-Korean reconciliation and cooperation.

North Korea also proposed that technical details for the talks be discussed through liaison officials at the border village of Panmunjom, but did not mention anything about the talks' agenda.

The AFP said the agenda would not likely include the ongoing standoff over the North's nuclear arms development, citing Pyongyang's consistent refusal to discuss the issue at inter-Korean talks. Pyongyang's earlier request of five-hundred thousand tons of fertilizer aid may instead be a topic at the meeting.

The proposal for talks follows an agreement on the need to continue talks between South Korean Prime Minister Lee Hae-chan and North Korea's number two leader Kim Yong-nam, following their meeting on the sidelines of the Asian-African summit in Jakarta last month.

South-North dialogue has remained in a deep freeze since last August when Pyongyang suspended talks in protest of a mass defection of hundreds of North Koreans to Seoul in the previous month.