"We are making thorough preparations to restore (nuclear facilities)," said foreign ministry official Hyon Hak-Bong.

"You may say we have already started work to restore them to their original status," he told reporters at the border truce village of Panmunjom before the start of talks between the two Koreas on energy aid.

The US State Department confirmed North Korea was moving "closer and closer" to restarting the plutonium-producing plant, and urged the regime to pull back.

"They haven't got to that point yet (of restarting) and we would urge them not to get to that point," department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.

"They have a choice. They can go down the pathway of having different and better relationship with the world... or they can keep themselves isolated, move the process backward. So we'll see," McCormack said in Washington in reaction to the comments.

The foreign ministry in Pyongyang said separately that work has been under way "since some time ago" to restore the reactor in response to the US failure to drop the North from a terrorism blacklist.

"Now that the US true colours are brought to light, the DPRK (North Korea) neither wishes to be delisted as a 'state sponsor of terrorism' nor expects such a thing to happen," a ministry spokesman told the official news agency.

"It will go its own way."

The energy talks went ahead Friday despite the deadlock in a six-nation aid-for-disarmament deal, which appeared to be making progress this summer.

The hardline communist state, which tested an atomic weapon in October 2006, began disabling its ageing reactor and other plants at Yongbyon last November under the pact with South Korea, the US, Japan, China and Russia.

But it announced last month it had halted work in protest at Washington's refusal to drop it from the blacklist, as promised under the deal.

Washington says the North must first accept strict outside verification of a nuclear inventory which Pyongyang handed over in June.

Foreign ministry official Hyon said such demands for what he called "forceful inspections" are not part of the six-party deal.

Similar demands for a "robber-like inspection method" led to war in Iraq, he said in opening remarks at the Panmunjom talks, adding that the US wants "to go anywhere at any time to collect samples and carry out examinations with measuring equipment."

Hyon said the North had "perfectly and flawlessly" completed 90 percent of disablement work including the extraction of 4,740 spent fuel rods.

In return for disablement, negotiating partners promised the impoverished state one million tons of heavy fuel oil or equivalent energy aid.

Nearly half has so far been delivered and Hwang Joon-Kook, chief of the South Korean delegation, said the rest would be sent.

"We also want to make sure that the six-party process does not go backward," Hwang said in his own opening remarks.

In Seoul, Foreign Minister Yu Myung-Hwan said it is unclear whether the North intends to turn the nuclear clock back "or whether it is another bargaining move."

A senior South Korean foreign ministry official said Friday's talks reached no agreement and the two sides failed to set a date for the next meeting.

He said Seoul's delegation urged the North to take part in talks on verification methods. "We told them that there will be a problem in (delivering) energy aid if disablement is not done."

In London, the International Institute for Strategic Studies said Thursday the North could put its nuclear programme back on track in less than a year.

Uncertainty over the health of leader Kim Jong-Il means its nuclear stalemate with Washington is likely to continue, it added.

Kim, 66, failed to appear at a September 9 anniversary parade. South Korean officials said he underwent brain surgery following a stroke but is recovering well.

Hyon rejected the reports about Kim's health as malicious.

"That's sophism by evil people wanting to break up unity between the two Koreas," he said.

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