Bush signed the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004, which is "intended to help promote human rights and freedom in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea," the White House said in a statement.

The law allows the president to provide grants to private, non-profit groups to support programs promoting human rights, democracy, rule of law, and the development of a market economy in North Korea.

Under the law, Washington can spend at least 20 million dollars a year until 2008 for humanitarian aid to North Korean citizens and refugees, the bulk of whom go to China.

The law requires strict monitoring of the aid to ensure that it is not diverted to the military, and establishes a special envoy to oversee North Korean human rights conditions.

The legislation also paved the way for North Koreans to seek refugee status in the United States and provides four millions dollars for expanding American radio broadcasts into the North to promote democracy and human rights.

The North Korean government reportedly holds about 200,000 political prisoners in camps managed through the use of forced labor and torture.

More than two million North Koreans are estimated to have died of starvation since the early 1990s due to food shortages.

The US Congress had made clear that under the law, human rights of North Koreans should remain a key concern in future six-party negotiations to end the Stalinist state's nuclear weapons drive.

The negotiations involve the United States, the two Koreas, Russia, China and Japan.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell is scheduled to visit Japan, China and South Korea from October 23 to 26 to discuss the possibility of wooing North Korea back to the negotiating table with its neighbors.

Last month, North Korea refused to return to the talks after rejecting an aid-for-disarmament plan proposed by the United States, citing Washington's "hostile" policy towards it and South Korea's nuclear experiments.

It is also believed Pyongyang wants to await the outcome of the November 2 US presidential elections.

While Bush backs multilateral talks to resolve the nuclear crisis in the Korean peninsula, his rival for the White House Senator John Kerry is pushing for bilateral talks with Pyongyang aside from international diplomacy.

Speaking ahead of Powell's trip, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters he did not expect the United States to sweeten its offer to North Korea.

At the last round of talks in June, the United States offered Pyongyang three months to shut down and seal its nuclear weapons facilities in return for economic and diplomatic rewards and multilateral security guarantees.

"I don't anticipate there will be any particular modification of those proposals in coming months," Boucher said. "And it's important for North Korea to be prepared to deal with them seriously."

He said all the other five parties, including host China and Russia, allies of North Korea, were prepared to resume the six-party talks.

Powell would "take the opportunity in public and in working with our allies to remind people that we have a significant and comprehensive proposal on the table," Boucher said.

He insisted that the upcoming US elections and policy differences between Bush and Kerry on North Korea were unlikely to hinder Powell's efforts to revive the six-party talks.

It was in the "national interest" to revive the negotiations, he said.

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