Seoul-- Seoul is poised to propose that U.S. President Bill Clinton make an apology for the alleged massacre of hundreds of Korean refugees in the hamlet of Nogun-ri by U.S. troops at the early days of the l950-53 Korean War, when bilateral negotiations resume next week, a government official said yesterday.

Korean negotiators, citing the demands of Korean victims and their family members, are also set to call for appropriate U.S. actions, including the restoration of the victims honor and, most of all, the giving of compensation to them, he said.

"We are set to raise the issue by conveying the Korean victims demands for compensation," the official said.

Korean and U.S. officials are set to hold negotiations on Dec. 6 in Seoul to discuss how to wrap up their year-long joint investigation of the killing and how to make a final announcement.

For this meeting, senior U.S. officials, including Assistant Secretary of the Army Patrick Henry and Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense Charles Cragin, are expected to visit here for talks with their Korean counterparts.

Officials here said that the two countries failed to secure any document or witness that could serve as hard evidence that U.S. soldiers were "ordered" to shoot refugees, since the incident took place 50 years ago and the witnesses memories are gradually fading away.

In addition, they pointed out that many testimonies by the witnesses lacked credibility because of their confusion over geographic knowledge regarding the site of the massacre and other reasons.

"In the process of figuring out whether U.S. soldiers were ordered to shoot refugees, we have managed to secure U.S. officers memos, including that of Col. Rogers, but they didn? pinpoint the Nogun-ri massacre specifically," the official said.