North Korea said on Monday it wants to reach a peace treaty quickly to replace the cease-fire that ended the 1950-53 Korean War in order to build trust with the United States.

The isolated and impoverished North has made similar calls before and said that if a peace regime were reached with the United States, it would help revive dormant international talks on ending its nuclear arms programme in exchange for aid.

U.S.-led U.N. forces fighting on behalf of South Korea signed the cease-fire with North Korea and China that ended the Korean War. The two Koreas are technically still at war and position more than 1 million troops near their border.

"If confidence is to be built between the DPRK (North Korea) and the U.S., it is essential to conclude a peace treaty for terminating the state of war, a root cause of the hostile relations, to begin with," the North's KCNA news agency quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying.

"The removal of the barrier of such discrimination and distrust as sanctions may soon lead to the opening of the six-party talks," it said.

North Korea said a few weeks ago it was ready to end its year-long boycott of six-country nuclear talks, but analysts said the North may try to attach conditions to its return to the discussions among the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States.