SEOUL, South Korea  North Korea restored regular border crossings for traffic going to South Korean factories in the North on Tuesday, while its leader, Kim Jong-il, reiterated his government’s call for a peace treaty with the United States.

North Korea had previously called for talks with Washington to replace the truce  which fell short of a formal treaty  that ended the Korean War in 1953.

“We can ease tensions and remove the danger of war on the peninsula when the United States abandons its hostile policy and signs a peace treaty with us,” Mr. Kim said in a commentary carried on Pyongyang Radio, which broadcasts North Korean government statements abroad.

The dispatch, which was released late Monday, did not say when Mr. Kim made the statement. But the remark was the latest in a number of recent conciliatory overtures from the North.