Russia says North Korea enrichment claim "alarming": Ifax

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia views North Korea's claim that it is near completing experimental enrichment of uranium as "very alarming," Interfax news agency quoted an unidentified Foreign Ministry official as saying on Friday.

"These reports cannot but provoke concern," the official said, Intefax reported.

"A very alarming precedent is being created by such an open and demonstrative disdain for resolutions of the United Nations Security Council," the official was quoted as saying.

North Korea said on Friday it was closer to a second way of making nuclear weapons, a move analysts saw as a new tactic to put pressure on the international community after a month of conciliatory gestures.

Under so-called six-party talks hosted by China, North Korea agreed in September 2005 to abandon its nuclear programs. The talks broke down at the end of last year with Pyongyang saying the format was dead.

Pyongyang, which conducted its second nuclear test on May 25, ceased carrying out the six-party agreement under which it was to give up its atomic ambitions in exchange for economic and diplomatic benefits.

The talks include North and South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the United States.

(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge, editing by Dmitry Solovyov)