The statement by a foreign ministry spokesman made it clear that the resumption of six-way talks was not imminent despite US officials expressing hope that a new round of stalled meetings would open this month or January.

"We are not impatient as regards the issue of the resumption of the talks nor would we like to make a hasty final conclusion," the spokesman was quoted as saying by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

"As the second Bush administration has not yet emerged, we would like to wait a bit longer to follow with patience what a policy it will shape," the spokesman said.

He noted that Beijing's special envoy to North Korea, Ning Fukui, visited Pyongyang November 24-26 and the North's UN diplomats met US officials in New York on November 30 and December 3.

During the meetings, North Korea stressed that Pyongyang remains "unchanged in our stand to seek a negotiated solution to the nuclear issue."

"Our intention is, therefore, to promote the process of the talks in such a way that they can substantially contribute to the denuclearization of the peninsula," he said.

He said the contact in New York prompted Pyongyang to judge that Washington showed no willingness to change what it described as a hostile policy toward the communist state and intended to use the six-party talks to force it to dismantle all its nuclear programmes, including those for peaceful purposes.

"What is essential for this is for the US to drop its hostile policy aimed at bringing down the system in the DPRK (North Korea), its dialogue partner, and express its willingness to co-exist with it. This is our consistent stand," he said.

Three rounds of multilateral talks to end North Korea's nuclear ambitions have taken place since the standoff erupted in October 2002, with the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States taking part.

North Korea boycotted a fourth round of the talks scheduled for Beijing in September in order to wait out the November US presidential elections, according to many analysts.

Washington hopes to hold a fourth round of talks by the first week of January, US State Department number two Richard Armitage said in an interview published Thursday.

Washington has called for a complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of the North's nuclear weapons program.

In London, South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun urged dialogue rather than the use of force to solve the North Korean nuclear standoff, saying in an interview on Friday he was sure talks would eventually lead to a resolution.

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