The comments by Maurice Strong, special advisor to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, came after North Korea said publicly on Thursday that it had nuclear weapons and that it would pull out of six-party talks about its programme.

"It does elevate the climate of hostility and misunderstanding that has been the main impediment -- a major impediment at least -- to the continued discussions," Strong told a press briefing at UN headquarters in New York.

"There's no question when the dialogue is conducted at the level of bellicose rhetoric, which we have heard from both sides," he said, referring to Pyongyang and Washington.

"This kind of thing may satisfy their desire to make their positions respectively known as strongly as possible, but they really don't help in setting the stage for real good constructive negotiations," he said.

Strong played down concern over Pyongyang's announcement, saying the secretive Stalinist state had already privately indicated it had developed nuclear weapons.

"Very few people who are close to the situation are surprised at anything but the timing, perhaps," he said, indicating it may be related to the second term of the administration of US President George W. Bush, which started last month.

On Thursday, Pyongyang suspended its participation in six-party talks that were first launched in August 2003, but said Friday they could resume if Washington changed its "hostile" policy and agreed to bilateral negotiations.

The United States quickly rejected one-on-one talks.

Strong said Pyongyang's statement did not mean a definitive end to the six-party talks -- which also include China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States -- aimed at resolving the nuclear standoff.

"The six-party negotiations have not been cancelled. The DPRK (North Korea) has simply said it is not prepared to continue, to participate in them under the conditions that they have described," Strong said.

"We should regard this not as the end of the negotiating process, but as a blip -- difficult, yes, an unhappy twist in the road. But nevertheless, the road to negotiations still runs through the six-party talks," he said.

He said Annan considered the standoff "one of the major threats to international peace and security which is still unresolved," and had instructed Strong to intensify efforts to get the parties back to the negotiating table.

"I suspect that there will be a peaceful resolution because the consequences of not resolving this issue are so horrendous for all parties," he said.

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.