Excerpt from report by Russian news agency ITAR-TASS

Beijing, 4 November: Russia does not rule out the possibility of its participation in building light-water reactors in North Korea, the head of the Russian Federal Agency for Atomic Energy, Aleksandr Rumyantsev, told an ITAR-TASS correspondent in an exclusive interview today.

"If North Korea rejoins the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and asks us for help with building a light-water reactor, why not participate in this," Rumyantsev said. He said that most likely the construction of a nuclear power plant in North Korea will be carried out by "a major international consortium", not by a single state.

He did not rule out that the group would include the states taking part in the six-party talks on the Korean peninsula's nuclear problem.

[Passage omitted: in September North Korea pledged to scrap its nuclear programme in return for help with power supplies]