MOSCOW (AFP) - Russia rapped South Korea over its recently disclosed secret nuclear experiments, calling on Seoul to cooperate fully with international experts investigating them.
In a statement, the Russian foreign ministry said the atomic experiments in South Korea as recently as four years ago were discussed in a meeting of diplomats on the sidelines of President Roh Moo-Hyun's visit to Russia.
"The Russian side stressed our interest in ensuring that the Republic of Korea cooperates in an open and transparent manner with the IAEA" in its investigation of the experiments, the statement said.
The statement came a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin called on neighboring North Korea to resume six-party talks on its own nuclear weapons program and reiterated Moscow's support for a nuclear-free Korean peninsula.
"Perspectives for the negotiations to settle North Korea's nuclear problem" were also on the agenda of Wednesday's Russo-South Korean talks, the foreign ministry said.
Russia however has unique ties with North Korea -- Putin is among the few leaders to have met North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il -- and the statement sought to present Moscow as an even-handed broker on Korean peninsula security.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei has voiced "serious concern" over the South Korean activities and IAEA investigators are due to report on them by November after talking to the scientists involved.
North Korea meanwhile has balked at returning to the negotiating table before the end of this month as hoped and has said it would not discuss its nuclear arms program at all until the South Korean experiments were clarified.
The South Korean government revealed earlier this month that its scientists had secretly enriched uranium in 2000 and had also extracted a small amount of plutonium in 1982.
Seoul has however reiterated pledges not to develop nuclear weapons and described those incidents as one-off experiments.
Putin and Roh had a private three-hour dinner on Monday followed by summit talks at the Kremlin on Tuesday, and both leaders afterwards were full of praise for each other and promises of stronger Russia-South Korea bonds in the future.
The upbeat tone of Roh's three-day visit changed subtly on Wednesday when, in addition to the Russian foreign ministry statement, Roh admitted that ties between Seoul and Moscow were still tainted by Cold War-era suspicion.
"We have not yet completely overcome mutual mistrust" of the Cold War, Roh said in an address to students at Moscow State University.
Despite praising Russia on Tuesday as a force for security in northeast Asia, Roh said Wednesday that the first order of business was the consolidation of economic links, before security cooperation could be boosted.
"We need to create an economic union based on free trade across borders" in northeast Asia, Roh said. "Once this economic union is created, we can work more closely together in the area of security."
The South Korean leader was quoted by Russia's RIA Novosti news agency as saying that his discussions with Putin had been valuable.
"We didn't hide any cards from one another," the agency quoted him as saying.