South Korea on Wednesday urged North Korea to return to nuclear disarmament talks and called on China to step up efforts to bring Pyongyang back to the table.
"I think the North has now secured all face-saving measures (it needed) to return to the six-party talks," Foreign Minister Yu Myung-Hwan told Yonhap news agency.
"Now is the time for the North and China to respond more actively (to calls for resuming the talks)," he said.
North Korea abandoned the talks, which group the two Koreas, Japan, China, Russia and the US, in protest at international censure over its launch of a long-range rocket. In May, it staged its second nuclear test since 2006.
"My personal expectation is that North Korea will return to the talks at an early date but I am cautious in predicting in more precise terms — whether it will do so in February or in March," Yu said.
Yu also said the North was believed to have begun developing a second way to build nuclear weapons by 1996.
"The North apparently launched its uranium enrichment programme immediately after the 1994 Geneva agreement," Yu said in reference to an accord under which Pyongyang vowed to freeze and dismantle its nuclear programme in return for energy aid.
"It must have begun the uranium enrichment programme no later than 1996," he said.
US envoy Stephen Bosworth said in December that North Korea agreed — during his visit to Pyongyang last month — to discuss its uranium enrichment programme whenever the nuclear disarmament talks restart.
Bosworth said the two sides had reached a "common understanding" on the need to resume the six-party talks.
He said the six-party grouping was the forum that would decide when and how to tackle the array of topics involved in the negotiations based on the 2005 joint statement.
Yu dismissed the North's persistent call for a peace treaty with the United States as a stalling tactic.
"North Korea's demand that a peace system should be discussed first runs against the 2005 joint statement. In reality, it is impossible. This is a tactic aimed at avoiding denuclearization or delaying it," Yu said.
In the 2005 statement, North Korea promised to dismantle its nuclear programmes in return for economic aid and diplomatic relations.
However, no date has been fixed.
Bosworth reiterated Washington's position that the United States would not discuss a peace treaty or any of the other issues before six-party negotiations resume.
A peace treaty would replace an armistice currently in force to formally end the 1950-1953 Korean War in which Communist North Korea, backed by Chinese troops, fought South Korea, supported by US-led UN troops.
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