North Korea on Saturday called for an official end to the Korean War through a peace treaty with the United States, and demanded that the U.S. drop its hard-line stance toward the communist state. "In order to ease military tension and secure a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula, the U.S. should move toward a peace treaty at an earlier date," the Rodong Sinmun, the organ of the North's powerful Workers' Party, said in a commentary. The newspaper said that North Korea and the U.S. have been engaged in discussions on the peaceful resolution of the communist state's nuclear ambitions, and Washington made it clear that it would not attack North Korea. "It is the right time to move into a peace treaty," the newspaper said. The two Koreas remain technically at war and since the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. Such an official declaration to the end of the war is seen by the current administration as one of the first steps toward bringing lasting peace to the peninsula. The timing over proclaiming a formal end to the war has been debated here since the two Korean leaders agreed in their October meeting to push for a summit of three or four parties to discuss declaring the end of the war and signing a peace treaty. They did not name the parties, but they are understood to mean the two Koreas, the U.S. and possibly China. However, South Korea's President-elect Lee Myung-bak opposes any talks on officially ending the Korean War until North Korea completely dismantles its nuclear weapons program. He has been critical of the Roh administration's push to start peace talks while Pyongyang is still taking actions to denuclearize.