"In terms of what North Korea does or how it approaches these talks, really the ball is in their court," Bolton told reporters during a visit to China to push Washington's agenda on the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction as well as to discuss North Korea.

The undersecretary of state declined to speculate on whether next week's talks in Beijing will bring about concrete results, unlike the first round which ended inconclusively in Beijing last August.

"I'm neither an optimist nor a pessimist. I'm a realist," Bolton said.

"We're waiting on what the North Koreans have to say in terms of the dismantlement of their nuclear weapons program."

He said the US position has not changed since the first round of talks to convince Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons program, when asked whether Washington will make concessions to the North during the second round scheduled for February 25.

"Our position is going to be substantively the same as it was before and that is the complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of the program," Bolton said.

"There is a way to get to that result. Libya has shown the way...," Bolton said.

Libya announced last December it would voluntarily dismantle its weapons of mass destruction programs and allow international arms inspectors to carry out inspections unconditionally.

Bolton said the issue of the North's abduction of Japanese citizens is more of a subject for Japan to raise "in the context of its bilateral relationship with North Korea," but added the United States supported Japan's position.

"The US concerns about North Korea extend beyond simply the North Korean nuclear weapons program," Bolton said.

"North Korea remains on the US list of states which sponsors terrorism and I can't think of any other way to describe the abduction of innocent civilians from Japan or any other country to North Korea as something other than acts of terrorism.

"We have said we will support the government of Japan if it raises that issue and it's an important issue to discuss," Bolton said.

Japan wants the issue dealt with in tandem with the nuclear talks, but Beijing, a key player in convincing Pyongyang to return to the negotiating table, had said the issue should be resolved between Tokyo and Pyongyang.

Five surviving Japanese among more than a dozen abducted by North Korean spies in the 1970s and 1980s were allowed to return to Japan in October 2002 following a historic bilateral summit. They have since refused to go back to North Korea.

Japan now wants eight relatives of the five Japanese to be allowed to go to Japan.

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