President Lee Myung-bak says North Korea has expressed willingness to engage in bilateral talks with South Korea, but has not yet made its intentions clear for wanting to do so.

Lee made the remark during a luncheon at the East Asia Summit in Thailand, which is the last stop of his three-nation Southeast Asian tour that brought him to Vietnam and Cambodia earlier in the week.

During the luncheon, Lee also called on the international community to unite to urge North Korea to abandon its nuclear program and quickly return to the six-party talks.

The president said that previous methods of engaging Pyongyang on its nuclear program, including compensating in return for agreements to denuclearize followed by the North eventually reneging on the deal, must not be repeated.

Lee said his “grand bargain” proposal would enable a full, irreversible nuclear dismantlement in return for a security guarantee and economic aid.

The presidential office in Seoul says the leaders of the nations attending the summit expressed support for Lee's effort to resolve the nuclear issue and agreed that the six-way talks must be promptly resumed.

The East Asia Summit, in its fourth year, is a 16-member consultative body comprising the ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and South Korea, China, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and India.

This is the first year that President Lee has attended the summit.