Four days after North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il said the six-party talks on the nuclear standoff could resume as early as next month, a five-member North Korean team led by Kwon Ho-Ung, a senior cabinet councillor, landed at Incheon Airport west of Seoul.

Kwon, the most senior North Korean delegate to visit the South in 13 months, is to hold talks with Unification Minister Chung Dong-Young, who heads the South Korean team.

"Please watch it with expectation," a smiling Kwon said when asked about prospects for the four-day talks which will start with informal discussions over dinner Tuesday.

The meetings will focus on getting North Korea back to the nuclear talks and boosting inter-Korean exchanges, the unification ministry in Seoul said.

Seoul is seeking to build on optimism fuelled by Kim Jong-Il's remarks that his country might return to the six-party talks as early as July should the United States "acknowlege and respect" it as a dialogue partner.

Kim, while meeting Unification Minister Chung in Pyongyang last week, also said the North would give up its missiles once friendly ties were established with Washington.

"As you have met the Great General Kim Jong-Il, you have already planted the seed for reunification," Kwon told Chung on Tuesday.

The two Koreas are expected to set schedules for what Chung and Kim agreed in Pyongyang on June 17, such as more reunions of separated families in August and general-level military talks.

But Seoul officials were also hoping to receive firmer signals that North Korea will return to the six-party talks on ending its nuclear weapons ambitions in exchange for economic benefits and security guarantees.

Since last June North Korea has boycotted the dialogue that also includes the United States, South Korea, Russia, Japan and China. On February 10 it declared that it possesses nuclear weapons.

Washington has responded to Kim Jong-Il's latest comments by asking the North for a firm date.

Seoul frets that its efforts to revive the nuclear talks might be ruined by recurring US criticism of North Korea.

At a seminar on Monday, US Undersecretary for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky repeated Washington's definition of North Korea as an outpost of tyranny, alongside Myanmar, Zimbabwe and Cuba, according to reports here.

"It is not helpful for the current reconciliatory mood that a senior US official called North Korea an outpost of tyranny," South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon was quoted as telling Yonhap news agency.

"I find it regrettable."

This week's talks will also likely address the impoverished North's request last week for an additional 150,000 tonnes of fertilizer aid from the South. Seoul donated 200,000 tonnes of fertilizer last month.

The two Koreas have remained technically at war since the 1950-1953 Korean conflict ended in an armistice, not a permanent peace treaty.

Icy relations have been slowly thawing since their leaders held an unprecedented summit in 2000.

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