The talks, likely a last-ditch effort by the administration of outgoing US President George W. Bush to move ahead on one of its most drawn-out diplomatic challenges, began late in the afternoon and were due to resume early Tuesday, according to hosts China.

"The Chinese are going to try to put together a draft and circulate something tomorrow (Tuesday)," US chief nuclear envoy Christopher Hill told journalists at the close of Monday's talks.

"It has to do with the verification. The key element will be what we did in Pyongyang. As you know we want to see some further definitions of this."

Monday's talks included discussions on fuel oil aid to North Korea, the schedule for the disablement of the North's nuclear programmes and the stumbling block issue of verification, Hill said.

Hope for any progress has been dimmed by North Korea's opposition to the removal of atomic samples from its sites by inspectors.

"There is a big gap between North Korea and the remaining five countries over ways to verify (the North's denuclearisation process)," Japan's chief delegate Akitaka Saiki told journalists after Monday's talks.

South Korean chief envoy Kim Sook echoed those sentiments.

"There was a common perception that this round of talks would not be easy given the differences between the individual parties," he said late Monday.

"Today's talks were mainly about the differences on the verification protocol, and no consensus was reached."

Kim said he was expecting "intense" talks on a verification draft to be offered by host China Tuesday.

The talks, grouping the United States, the two Koreas, China, Russia and Japan, got under way at a government compound in western Beijing despite the North's apparent refusal to deal with Japan.

North Korea said Saturday it would not recognise Japan's participation in protest over Tokyo's refusal to provide energy aid under an accord that offered Pyongyang energy and diplomatic concessions in return for denuclearisation.

"We will neither treat Japan as a party to the talks nor deal with it even if it impudently appears in the conference room, lost to shame," the communist country's foreign ministry said in a statement.

Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura countered: "Japan plans to maintain its close coordination with the countries concerned so that we can proceed with both the nuclear issue and matters involving Japan and North Korea."

Several of the delegations held preliminary bilateral meetings, including the teams from the two Koreas.

"Bilateral relations also have significance for making progress in the six-party talks," the chief South Korean negotiator said before meeting with his North Korean counterpart Kim Kye-Gwan.

Under a landmark 2007 pact, Pyongyang agreed to disable facilities at its plutonium-producing Yongbyon nuclear complex and reveal its atomic activities.

In return, it was to get one million tonnes of fuel oil or energy aid of equivalent value. About half of that has been delivered.

Japan has withheld its share until North Korea accounts fully for Japanese nationals kidnapped by Pyongyang during the Cold War.

The North has admitted it seized some Japanese to train its spies, and in 2002 let five return. It insists the others are dead, but Japan believes they are alive.

In October, after an apparent agreement on verification procedures, the United States said it would drop North Korea from a terrorism blacklist, and the North reversed plans to restart its plutonium-producing nuclear plants.

But the process has hit a new snag, with North Korea, which tested an atomic weapon in October 2006, resisting the idea of letting inspectors take away samples.

A note of optimism, but NKorea didn't change its tune in 2008
Nuclear-armed North Korea, castigated by its critics as a land of deprivation, despotism and hardline communist dogma, showed a new face to the world in 2008 -- but only briefly.

In what former US defence secretary William Perry called a "sublime moment," the New York Philharmonic performed in Pyongyang in February and opened the historic concert with the US and North Korean national anthems.

"This is a little door being opened by members of the North Korean government who felt it was time that a door be opened," musical director Lorin Maazel said at the time.

In another TV spectacular, the North in June blew up the cooling tower at its Yongbyon atomic complex to affirm its commitment to nuclear disarmament.

But as of early December, Washington and Pyongyang were still haggling about the next steps in the tortuous, years-long disarmament negotiations.

And the North had slammed the door on neighbour South Korea, imposing strict border controls and blasting Seoul's conservative government as warmongering puppets of Washington.

"In terms of openness, North Korea has been moving backward this year," said Cho Min, senior analyst at Seoul's Korea Institute for National Unification.

Widespread reports that leader Kim Jong-Il is ill compounded uncertainty about the North's future direction.

Kim, 66, failed to appear at a September 9 parade marking the country's 60th birthday. US and South Korean officials said he had suffered a stroke around mid-August.

South Korean officials believe he is recovering and still in control, but no one has hard information about the inner workings of his secretive regime.

Despite the US-funded cooling tower demolition, 2008 saw little progress in international efforts to rid the North of its nuclear weapons.

Work continued to make the plutonium-producing nuclear complex unusable. But the North in September began reversing the process in protest at US delays in removing the country from a terrorism blacklist.

In October the two nations appeared to reach agreement on ways in which outside inspectors could verify the North's declaration of nuclear activities.

The delisting went ahead. But North Korea then stated it had never agreed to the sampling of atomic material, a procedure which the US and others say is crucial to verification.

A six-party forum which has been negotiating disarmament since 2003 was scheduled to meet on December 8 to try to bridge differences.

While the North seems willing to shut down its ageing Yongbyon complex, the key question is whether it will ever surrender its nuclear weapons and plutonium stockpile.

"The real game starts next year," said Cho. "North Korea has so far signalled that it will never give up its nuclear weapons."

Tensions rose markedly with South Korea after conservative President Lee Myung-Bak took office in February.

In contrast to the engagement policy of his liberal predecessors, Lee linked major economic aid to progress in denuclearisation. An enraged Pyongyang labelled him a traitor and US sycophant.

Ties frayed further when North Korean soldiers in July shot dead a Seoul housewife who strayed into a military zone at the Mount Kumgang resort.

Tours to the resort, one of two major joint economic projects, were suspended.

On December 1 the North halted a cross-border cargo railway and a separate tour and severely restricted border crossings -- a move which hampered operations at the second project, the Kaesong industrial estate.

Several analysts say the regime wants to restrict Kaesong's operations because it fears that Chinese-style economic reforms threaten its grip on power.

Cho said the 35,000 local workers at Kaesong have a much better lifestyle than the city's other residents.

"The well-fed and happy-looking workers commute every day to and from the South Korean plants, serving as quiet but powerful evangelists of capitalism in the city," he told AFP.

Outside the showpiece capital Pyongyang and some other areas, 2008 was another year of struggling for survival for millions.

In July the UN's World Food Programme said hunger was at its worst since the famine years of the 1990s, with many eating grasses and roots to stay alive.

It launched an international appeal for funds to feed up to six million people, a quarter of the population.

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