South Korea open to summit with North if conditions met

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak waves before he leaves to Europe by aeroplane at Seoul military airport in Seongnam, south of Seoul May 8, 2011.

BERLIN (Reuters) - South Korean President Lee Myung-bak said Monday he was ready to invite North Korea's leader Kim Jong-il to a security summit if he agreed to renounce nuclear weapons and apologized for clashes last year.

In a news conference following a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin, South Korean President Lee said he would extend the invitation for the summit next March only if all the conditions were met.

"North Korea should say clearly beforehand that it renounces nuclear weapons," he told reporters.

"Only when this pledge has been made will we extend the invitation," he said through a translator.

"An apology by North Korea is the basis for the six-party talks," he added, referring to discussions with a group including the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia.

Momentum has been building toward a resumption of the talks, aimed at encouraging nuclear-armed North Korea to give up nuclear weapons, after inter-Korean tension spiked to the highest level in years in 2010 with the sinking of a South Korean warship and the shelling of a South Korean island.

Shuttle diplomacy among the six-party envoys has increased in recent weeks, and China's nuclear envoy and his South Korean counterpart agreed in Seoul late last month on a stage-by-stage process for restarting the talks.

Seoul and Washington are skeptical regarding the North's sincerity about denuclearizing, citing its revelations last year of major advances in a uranium-enrichment program which could open a second route to make an atomic bomb.

Experts say the North has enough fissile material from its plutonium program to make about eight nuclear bombs, and few people believe the secretive state will ever give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons, which it sees as a deterrent against attack and a formidable bargaining chip.

(Reporting by Annika Breidthardt; writing by Brian Rohan; editing by Michael Roddy)