South Korea’s Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan is stressing that the North Korean nuclear issue is not on the official agenda of the 2012 Seoul Nuclear Security Summit following remarks made by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Minister Kim said during a news briefing Thursday that he interpreted the UN chief’s remarks about discussing North Korea’s plan to launch a satellite as talks to be held on the sidelines of the event.

As all the state heads at the six-party talks are taking part in next week’s summit, the minister said he is sure there will be talks during bilateral meetings on ways to stop Pyongyang from launching its satellite. Ban added he will disclose the results of the talks as soon as the summit is over.

Regarding North Korea’s threats to regard any statement made about its nuclear weapons program during the summit a declaration of war, the foreign minister said he does not understand why Pyongyang raised the issue since individual countries are not included in the summit’s agendas.