North Korea claimed this week that the United States had hastily proposed to have the working group meeting for the fourth round of the six-party talks in New York.

China has been hosting all the working group and plenary meetings of the six-party talks, which also include the United States, two Koreas, Japan and Russia.

"We're still looking at Beijing as both the host and the chairman of the next working group and plenary," Adam Ereli, deputy spokesman of the US State Department, told reporters.

A North Korean foreign ministry spokesman told the state-run Korean Central News Agency on Monday that the US proposal to host the meeting was made during a "multilateral exchange of views" in New York recently.

"This clearly indicates that the US is, in actuality, not interested in making the dialogue fruitful but only seeks to give an impression that it makes efforts to solve the issue," the North Korean spokesman charged.

Pyongyang had hinted that it might not attend the next working-group meeting if Washington kept refusing to reward the freezing of North Korean nuclear facilities while toughening terms and conditions.

Ereli also said the United States expected the new round of six-party talks to be held on schedule.

"As you know, it was agreed at the last round to convene the next round before the end of September, and a working group meeting before that. That is still the timeline we're working towards," he said.

The stand-off over North Korea's quest for nuclear weapons erupted in October 2002 when the United States accused Pyongyang of operating a nuclear weapons program based on enriched uranium, violating the 1994 nuclear freeze of its separate plutonium producing program.

Pyongyang has denied running the uranium-based program, but has again fired up its once-mothballed plutonium-based program.

The United States had tabled a plan at the third round of talks giving Pyongyang three months to shut down and seal its nuclear weapons facilities in return for economic and diplomatic rewards and security guarantees.

Pyongyang appears to have rejected the plan outright.

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