"The North Koreans did raise the issue but it's not something that we entertained," Adam Ereli, the department's deputy spokesman, told reporters.

The Washington Times, in a front-page report Tuesday, quoted Bush administration officials as saying that Washington would consider again supplying Pyongyang with a light-water nuclear reactor as part of recent talks in Beijing.

The North Korean delegate at the six-party working group talks reportedly asked the US delegate about the status of a light-water reactor program if Pyongyang ended its covert nuclear weapons program based on uranium enrichment.

Ereli denied Wednesday that Washington agreed to consider the request.

"We did not, I would say, welcome or entertain in any way that idea, for a number of reasons," Ereli said.

Most importantly, the request ran counter to the key objective of the working group discussions among China, North Korea, Russia, Japan, South Korea and the United States: to get a clear commitment from Pyongyang that it would completely end its nuclear programs, he said.

"So before we talk about any one aspect of the program, we're going to want to get recognition that complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement is the agreed upon goal," he said.

In addition to that, Ereli said North Korea should be brought back into the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and subject to additional protocol safeguards to comply with any commitments on its part.

"We're not prepared to provide inducements to North Korea for compliance with its international obligations," he pointed out.

The row over North Korea's nuclear program has been deadlocked since October 2002, when Washington said the Stalinist state had broken a 1994 nuclear freeze by launching a secret weapons drive.

North Korea also pulled out of the non-proliferation accord in January 2003 after expelling inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Under the 1994 deal, the United States, Japan and South Korea agreed to provide North Korea with two light-water reactors, designed to be less useful for making nuclear weapons.

The working group meeting in Beijing ended last Friday with no breakthrough in the 19-month impasse on how North Korea would meet its security needs in exchange for giving up its unproven and untested nuclear weapons program.

WAR.WIRE