Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for the Korean peninsula to be free of nuclear weapons, the state news agency IRNA reported on Sunday.
"The Islamic Republic of Iran wants nuclear weapons disarmament all over the world, including the Korean peninsula," he was quoted as saying in a meeting Saturday with visiting North Korean parliamentary speaker Choe Thae-Bok.
Ahmadinejad, whose own country is at loggerheads with the international community over its nuclear program, said that he believed talks could resolve the crisis triggered by Pyongyang's atomic bomb test in October.
"Different issues in the world including the problems of both Koreas can be solved through talks," he said.
North Korea's nuclear program took center stage at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Vietnam, where member states expressed "strong concern" Sunday at the nuclear test and urged Pyongyang to resume disarmament talks.
According to IRNA, Choe Thae-Bok called for an expansion of ties and co-operation with the Islamic republic, which was lumped in "the axis of evil" along with North Korea and Iraq by US President George W. Bush after the September 11 attacks on the United states.
The United States and others Western nations believe Iran's uranium enrichment program is ultimately aimed at producing fissile material for nuclear weapons.
Washington is seeking to impose tough UN Security Council sanctions on Iran after it refused to halt enrichment in return for an international offer of incentives. However Russia, a staunch supporter of both Iran and North Korea, warned the world community against pushing them "into a corner."
"I think the world community must go very carefully -- firmly but carefully -- on resolving the problem of the Korean peninsula and resolving the Iranian nuclear problem," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in Vietnam.
Iran insists it will use the enriched uranium only to fuel nuclear power stations, something it is permitted to do as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.