The incoming secretary-general of the United Nations plans to appoint a special envoy to North Korea - a post that has been vacant for 18 months.
Ban Ki-Moon of South Korea was quoted in the London Timestoday saying: "I intend to have my own special envoy who will be assisting me and will engage in talks with North Koreans, who will facilitate the resolution of Korean Peninsula issues, when I assume [office]."
"[It would be] somebody who would have experience and knowledge about Korean Peninsula issues and somebody who would be acceptable, be able to have dialogue with South and North Korea, particularly North Korea," he told the newspaper.
The comments came after Pyongyang announced on October 9th that it had conducted a nuclear test, throwing the region into crisis.
Outgoing UN chief Kofi Annan's special adviser for North Korea, Maurice Strong, withdrew from his duties in April 2005 amid investigations about his ties to a suspect in Iraq's scandal-tainted oil-for-food programme.
Mr Ban reiterated a desire to focus more on North Korea than his predecessor who never visited the country during his time as Secretary General of the UN.
"It's quite natural that I will pay more attention and more priority on this issue, because I'm coming from Korea [and] because I'm going to work as secretary general," he said
Mr. Ban, who is South Korea's foreign minister, said he was ready to travel to North Korea himself.
The Ban also said he was thinking about choosing a female deputy secretary general to replace outgoing Mark Malloch Brown.