A statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency announcing the date ended a six-month stalemate that followed a contentious first round of talks lasting three days in Beijing in August.

A senior North Korean official said the announcement reflected an apparent softening of Washington's stance towards the Stalinist state.

"There have been a lot of groundless speculations (about the resumption of the six-nation talks) but the United States has apparently come to pay attention to our position based on a pragmatic solution," said Kim Ryong-Song, a cabinet minister attending inter-Korean talks in Seoul.

The stumbling block to talks had been North Korea's insistence on US concessions including an end to sanctions and a resumption of fuel aid in return for a promise to freeze its nuclear programme.

Washington said it would offer no rewards to the regime branded part of an "axis of evil" by President George W. Bush until it agreed to a complete, irreversible and verifiable end to the nuclear weapons drive.

Secretary of State Colin Powell said Tuesday the United States hoped the talks would prove "successful" but gave no hint that Washington expected a breakthrough.

"The six-party talks will resume in Beijing on the 25th of February ... and we hope that these talks will be successful," Powell told reporters outside the State Department.

The first round of talks in August among the two Koreas, China, Russia, Japan and the United States were inconclusive and North Korea later denounced Washington for intransigence and said it had no further interest in follow-up talks.

Analysts said the gulf between the two positions remained wide and detected no softening from Washington.

"North Korea must have come under great pressure from China to agree to come to the second round of the six-nation talks," said Chun Hyun-Jun of South Korea's state-run Korea Institute for National Unification.

"It is difficult to expect any substantial outcome from the talks as North Korea is trying to make out where the US presidential election is going while Washington has no mind to hurry."

The announcement came after James Kelly, Washington's top envoy on North Korea, held talks in Seoul with Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon and South Korea Unification Minister Jeong Se-Hyun on Monday.

Kelly and the South Korean officials reaffirmed the US position and insisted that North Korea's uranium enrichment programme, which the Stalinist state denies possessing, must be part of the negotiations.

South Korea's Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-Hyuck said the talks were expected to last three days but were "open-ended."

China's Foreign Ministry said the new round was an important step.

"We hope through everyone's efforts this meeting will achieve substantial results," Chinese spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said, adding that consultations were underway to determine their duration.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said he hoped North Korea would move to rejoin the international community.

"I want them to quickly realize that international isolation will not work," Koizumi told reporters.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov told the ITAR-TASS news agency that Washington and Pyongyang remained far apart.

"We should not expect a breakthrough" at the new round, he said.

Lee said North Korea would use the meeting to flesh out its proposal for a nuclear freeze and allow Washington to present its counter proposals.

He said working groups might be set up to prepare for more substantive talks down the road.

The nuclear crisis erupted in October 2002 when Kelly travelled to Pyongyang to confront the Stalinist regime with evidence that it was running a clandestine nuclear weapons programme based on enriched uranium in violation of a 1994 nuclear freeze agreement with the United States.

Washington believes North Korea has one or two crude nuclear bombs made from plutonium diverted from its nuclear complex at Yongbyon, 90 kilometres (50 miles) north of Pyongyang before the 1994 nuclear freeze took effect.

North Korea, which expelled nuclear inspectors and pulled out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as the crisis deepened, has denied enriching uranium but said it has reprocessed 8,000 spent fuel rods at Yongbyon, diverting enough fuel for up to six more bombs.

WAR.WIRE