Two North Korean soldiers march at the Panmunjong peace village inside the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea

SEOUL, April 14 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - North Korea's softening of its stance on the nuclear crisis may be attributed to the war in Iraq, South Korean officials said Monday, April 14.

A cautious statement from North Korea indicating a shift in its position, and a welcoming response from U.S. President George W. Bush, triggered optimism that diplomacy may be defusing the impasse over North Korea's nuclear weapons drive, Agence France-Presse (AFP) said.

North Korea said Saturday, April 12, it would accept any form of dialogue with Washington over its suspected nuclear program if the latter dropped its hostile policy toward the communist state.

Until now, Pyongyang had insisted on one-on-one talks which Washington has rejected, saying the nuclear crisis constituted a threat to world peace and must be dealt with through multilateral talks.

South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun's office said the move indicated North Korea was “complying with international efforts” to resolve the crisis and was ready to accept multilateral dialogue.

"The government considers this as an indication that North Korea will accept multilateral talks on resolving its nuclear issue," it said in a statement.

The North Korea statement shows "that North Korea appears to be creating a favorable atmosphere for dialogue while complying with efforts by our government and the international community to solve the nuclear issue through dialogue," the statement added.

President Bush, euphoric over the “military victory” in Iraq, indicated that the bitter standoff with North Korea over its nuclear program was easing.

"We are making progress on the Korean peninsula," Bush told reporters at the White House Sunday, April 13.

"We have made it clear that we think that the best way to deal with their proliferation is through a multinational forum. It looks like that might be coming to fruition, that's very good news," he said.

The North Korean change of heart was linked by South Korean officials to the “U.S. military victory” in Iraq.

"I think the Iraq war might have prompted a change in the international political landscape," Roh's national security advisor Ra Jong-Yil was quoted as saying by Yonhap news agency. "North Korea appears to be a little bit flexible and softer in its approach to dialogue."

Diplomatic pressure from China and Russia could also have prompted the North Korean statement.

"If the U.S. is ready to make a bold switchover in its Korea policy for a settlement of the nuclear issue, the DPRK (North Korea) will not stick to any particular dialogue format," the spokesman told the official Korean Central News Agency.

The official did not elaborate on what form of bold move Pyongyang was expecting from the United States, but analysts said the language could be taken as a reference to the Bush administration's so-called "bold initiative" of economic and political support for North Korea that was shelved when the nuclear crisis erupted in October 2002.

A Foreign Ministry official said South Korea would now press Washington and Pyongyang to begin dialogue as soon as possible. Foreign Minister Yoon Young-Kwan spoke with U.S. ambassador Thomas Hubbard earlier Monday to convey the government's position.

China has already offered to host talks and various formats for dialogue are being discussed that could include the two Koreas, Japan, China, the United States and Russia.

North Korea, along with Iraq, where U.S.-led forces have ousted the regime of Saddam Hussein, and Iran, was branded by Bush as part of an "axis of evil" in his 2002 State of the Union address.

The nuclear standoff erupted in October when North Korea reportedly admitted that it was running a secret uranium-enrichment program, in violation of a 1994 nuclear deal between the two countries, saying it did it as a response to the U.S. fuel cut to the country.

North Korea had asked for a non-aggression pact and direct talks to resolve the crisis. Washington, which has not ruled out the military options, said Iraq and North Korea were different cases and it was seeking a peaceful resolution to the North Korean standoff.