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North Korea Friday agreed to hold talks with South Korea next week, Seoul officials said, amid high tensions between the two nations.    The North has accepted a proposal for working-level talks on June 11 at the Kaesong joint industrial complex just north of the border, according to South Korea's unification ministry.    South Korean and US troops have gone on heightened alert since the North staged a nuclear test in late May, renounced the armistice that ended the Korean war in the 1950s and threatened the South with possible attack.

There is growing speculation that North Korea may be preparing to launch another new medium or long-range missile.Satellite images from the GlobalSecurity website show the new Tongchang-ni launch site in the North's west coast near China and is reportedly ready for use after nearly a decade of construction.

The news of the suspected launch preparation came as South Korean media reported on Friday of US intentions to implement financial sanctions on Pyongyang in an effort to punish the country over its weapons trading and counterfeit activities.

Warning the North that its actions will "no longer be rewarded", James Steinberg, the US deputy secretary of state,  told Lee Myung-bak, the South Korean president, that "North Korea would be mistaken if it thinks it can make provocations and then get what it wants through negotiation as it did in the past. The US won't repeat the same mistake again".