|PIC1|The General Secretary of the World Council of Churches has expressed his "alarm and disappointment" over the breakdown of the Six Party Talks to address North Korea's nuclear programme.

The talks ground to a halt after North Korea's controversial rocket launch in January. The reclusive communist country has since carried out further nuclear tests, compounding the stalemate.

In a letter to the governments of North and South Korea, Japan, China, Russia and the US, the Rev Dr Samuel Kobia decried the breakdown of the talks, saying it had "led to actions that escalate tensions and confrontations".

He called on the US and North Korea to hold bilateral talks within the context of resumed Six Party Talks on the latter's nuclear programme, saying they could act as an "incentive for progress" and bring about "multilateral success".

"We urge each of you to return to the negotiating table prepared to deal with the difficult but eminently solvable issues before you," wrote Kobia.

He expressed the conviction that "negotiations which could build a lasting peace in the Korean peninsula are within your governments' power".

Kobia said that negotiations on North Korea's nuclear programme could not ignore the fact that "five of the six parties are recognised nuclear weapon states or are protected by such states", a point not missed by North Korea.

He said the Six Party Talks could be "greatly facilitated" by the nuclear weapon states carrying out their obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, aimed at creating a nuclear-free world.

The WCC general secretary urged the countries to take "bold and concrete steps towards a nuclear-weapon-free Korean peninsula and ultimately a nuclear-weapon-free zone in Northeast Asia".

"It is time to make the Korean peninsula a setting for successful disarmament rather than a focus of regional instability and international failure," he stated.

Kobia recently returned from visiting churches in North Korea and an international consultation in Hong Kong on unification between the two Koreas.

The WCC plans to visit North Korean churches again in the run-up to its next 10th Assembly in Busan, South Korea, in 2013.