The United States is ready to begin negotiating a peace treaty with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea within this year if Pyongyang makes a strategic decision to completely give up its nuclear ambition, a US official has said.

The United States is certainly prepared to begin the process sometime this year, US Ambassador to South Korea Alexander Vershbow said in a special lecture for a local civic organization yesterday.

The establishment of a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula will be a complicated process that must include declaring a formal end to the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in an armistice, he said, while stressing that regulating or reducing the troop level along the heavily-fortified inter-Korean border will be necessary.

Vershbow said that no one is sure whether the DPRK has made nuclear weapons, South Korea's Yonhap News Agency reported today.

The United States accepts DPRK as a negotiating partner, he said. "But if they want a full normal relationship with the United States, denuclearization is the key," the diplomat was quoted as saying by Yonhap.