That could be the 2,000-megawatt question when six-way talks on Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions re-open later this month - a new beginning that got a kick-start with South Korea's offer for the power-starved North.

"Seoul's energy project must have whetted Pyongyang's appetite as it would meet most of the shortfalls for its immediate energy need," said Dong Yong-Seung, senior researcher at the Samsung Economic Research Institute.

"As to the question whether the North would accept the South controlling the power switch ... it was North Korea itself that had asked for electricity from the South," he said.

North Korea, fighting shortages of food and power, has repeatedly demanded energy and security guarantees before renouncing a weapons nuclear program that the CIA believes may have produced at least one or two crude nuclear bombs.

An international consortium had been building two nuclear-power reactors in North Korea under a 1994 deal between Pyongyang and the United States.

That program came to a halt when the United States claimed it had been told by North Korea that it was running a uranium enrichment program.

Three previous rounds of six-party talks -- bringing together both Koreas as well as China, Japan, Russia and the United States -- ended in stalemate last year when North Korea walked away from the bargaining table.

Now the talks are back on, with South Korea saying it could route 2,000 megawatts of surplus electricity to the North -- roughly equal to the total amount the country is currently producing.

But that would mean leaving the on-off switch across one of the most heavily fortified borders in the world, between two countries that technically remain at war since the end of the Korean conflict in 1953.

Professor Koh Yu-Hwan of Dongguk University said he was "quite certain" that Pyongyang would offer a counter-proposal -- perhaps including getting the nuclear reactors project back on stream if it gives up the chase for the bomb.

"It is highly likely that North Korea will ask for a promise to resume the light-water reactor project after the nuclear issue is settled," Koh said.

South Korea had already put 1.1 billion dollars into the reactors when the project was put on hold.

Before Seoul's latest offer was made public this week, it had been conveyed to North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il when South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-Young met him in Pyongyang last month.

Kim then told Chung that Pyongyang might get back to six-party talks on dismantling the North's nuclear programmes as early as July -- and the North subsequently announced its return to the negotiating table.

"North Korea looks forward to the next round of talks taking place as scheduled and to obtain positive progress," China Central Television quoted Kim as saying on Wednesday.

"The realisation of the Korean peninsula's de-nuclearisation is the target of North Korea," Kim said. "I hope the mechanism of the six-party talks will be an important platform for (its) realisation."

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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