SEOUL, Aug. 27 (Xinhuanet) -- South Korean Prime Minister Lee Hae-chan Friday denied a Japanese media report that South Korea had sounded out the idea of holding a summit with Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

    Lee Hae-chan said his remarks had been "wrongly conveyed" by the Nihon Keizai Shimbun and he wanted the paper to correct them, reported the South Korean Yonhap News Agency.

    In its Friday edition, the Japanese economic daily said that Seoul will try to arrange a summit with Pyongyang to help defuse the 22-month nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula. The daily quoted Lee Hae-chan as saying "a key to resolve the nuclear issue can be found if an inter-Korean summit is held."

    However, Lee said he had told the newspaper that if the summit was held, he hoped that it would be held in a way that could find a solution to the nuclear dispute.

    Lee once accompanied former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung to visit Pyongyang for the first-ever inter-Korean summit in 2000.     

    Moreover, the South Korean Presidential Office also dismissed the Japanese newspaper's report and said its position on the summit remained unchanged.

    "South Korea can push for the summit if meaningful and significant progress can be made on the nuclear issue through the summit," Kim Jong-min, the spokesman of the Blue House, was quotedby Yonhap News as saying.

    But the spokesman said this was not the time to push ahead with the summit and that progress in the nuclear dispute could have a positive influence on inter-Korean relations and vice versa.

    In the Joint South-North Declaration released by the inter-Korean summit in 2000, DPRK top leader Kim Jong Il promised to make a return visit to Seoul at a proper time.

    Previously, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun also expressed that he would not seek a summit for the time being, citing a lack of sufficient progress in the ongoing multilateral talks to resolve the nuclear issue. Enditem¡¡