North Korea has expressed an interest in a freeze-for-freeze deal with the United States and South Korea in talks with Russian officials, the country’s deputy minister of foreign affairs said on Tuesday.

“We discussed this initiative with them (North Korea), they showed interest in it,” Igor Morgulov told a conference in Berlin, in comments carried by Russia’s state-run TASS agency.

Beijing and Moscow have argued for what they call the “freeze-for-freeze” deal, which would see Pyongyang halt missile and nuclear tests in return for the freeze of the U.S.-South Korean joint military exercises on the peninsula, since early in the year.

China