South and North Korea agreed on Wednesday to march together at the opening ceremony of the Athens Olympics as they did in Sydney and also to begin talks about fielding a unified team for the 2008 Games in Beijing.

"Yes, we will march in the stadium in Athens together, like in Sydney," Jo Sang Nam, North Korea's National Olympic Committee Secretary General, told reporters on the sidelines of a meeting of national Olympic committees.

"Then there will be discussions about one common team in four years time in Beijing."

He did not say when the talks between Seoul and Pyongyang would start about the unified team

While the leaders of the Olympic committees of the two Koreas mingled easily in Athens, their diplomats were meeting in Beijing along with other nations to discuss a crisis over the North's nuclear arms programme.

North and South Korea first marched together in an Olympic opening ceremony in Sydney in 2000.