Excerpt from report by Russian news agency ITAR-TASS

Moscow, 19 September: The head of Rosatom [Federal Agency for Atomic Energy], Aleksandr Rumyantsev, has said that Russia could build a nuclear power station in North Korea. "Russia is always ready to join in a project, and we have both the potential and the desire for that," he said in an exclusive interview to ITAR-TASS.

Rumyantsev welcomed the statement adopted in Beijing today on the results of the six-party talks. "I am always in favour of diplomatic means of finding solutions at the six-party talks," he said.

Under the document adopted in Beijing, North Korea committed itself to renouncing nuclear weapons and rapidly returning to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty regime. Other parties to the consultations - Russia, the USA, Japan, China and the Republic of Korea - announced their "intention to give North Korea assistance in power engineering".

The Rosatom head thinks that "assistance in power engineering" to North Korea could be building a nuclear power station. "We build nuclear stations abroad, and Russia could organize the same sort of project in the DPRK."

At the same time, he pointed out that to start with it is necessary to wait for a decision by the parties to the consultations as to exactly what "assistance in power engineering" consists of.

[Passage omitted: Rumyantsev said he could not comment on technical aspects of a possible project since Russia has not cooperated with North Korea for a decade]