Pyongyang - North Korea said it was ready in principle to resume reconciliation talks that it broke off this year with South Korea but made such a development dependent on the South's behaviour, a German lawmaker visiting Pyongyang said Friday.

Hartmut Koschyk, chairman of the German-Korean parliamentary group, met with North Korea's second most powerful leader Friday and said Kim Yong Nam accused South Korean President Lee Myung Bak of brushing off the reconciliation efforts of the past 10 years.

South Korea must, therefore, "send a strong signal," Kim told Koschyk, the German said.

Kim, president of parliament in the communist country, said his country expected first and foremost from South Korea a clear commitment toward agreements made in 2000 and 2007 at the countries' only two summits.

South Korea must show it wants to implement the agreements, Kim told Koschyk.

Those accords included promises to hold ministerial-level and military talks, cooperate on economic projects, hold reunions for families separated by the Korean border, work to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula and replace the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War with a peace treaty.

Such a declaration from South Korea would greatly contribute to reconciliation between the neighbours and would represent a "milestone" in the journey toward reunification, Kim said, according to the German lawmaker.

"Inter-Korean relations depend on how South Korea acts," Koschyk quoted Kim as saying.

Since Lee's conservative government took office in February, relations between the two Koreas have cooled substantially.

Lee demanded that if economic cooperation was to deepen with North Korea, it must make progress in abolishing its nuclear programmes.

North Korea's government reacted by freezing high-level dialogue with the South. (dpa)