Ning Fukui, China's chief working-level delegate to the talks, and his South Korean counterpart Cho Tae-Yong had a 90-minute meeting to fine-tune specific talks schedules, Seoul officials said.

"They discussed how to resume the talks and what efforts to be done for successful talks," a South Korean official said after the closed-door session.

"We have only two months before having the scheduled fourth round of six-nation talks by the end of September," Ning said prior to talks with Cho.

"It is time to have specific discussions on how and when to call a working-level meeting in preparations for a fourth round of talks."

Ning is also expected to hold talks with other South Korean officials, including National Security Council secretariat chief Lee Jong-Seok, before heading to Tokyo on Tuesday for similar meetings.

Japan, China, the two Koreas, Russia and the United States agreed at the last round of six-way talks in Beijing in June to convene again by the end of September to seek to break the 21-month-old deadlock.

China is preparing to convene a meeting of working level officials from the six nations next month ahead of the main session.

Ning met his US counterpart Joseph DeTrani in Beijing last week. DeTrani reaffirmed the US demand that all Pyongyang's nuclear programs be addressed to end the nuclear standoff.

The United States has called for the dismantling of Pyongyang's all plutonium- and uranium-based weapons programs in return for aid, security guarantees and the lifting of political and economic sanctions.

North Korea, which denies running any uranium program, has said it would freeze its plutonium nuclear program in return for immediate rewards in what it has described as a first stage settlement leading to complete dismantlement.

The nuclear impasse blew up in October 2002, when Washington said the Stalinist state had broken a 1994 nuclear freeze by launching a secret nuclear weapons program.

Senior US officials have urged North Korea to follow the example of Libya which renounced the pursuit of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons plans in return for having Washington lift most sanctions against Tripoli.

But North Korea has said the US offer was "nothing but a sham offer."

WAR.WIRE