"The second phase of the fourth round of six-party talks will be held in Beijing on September 13," foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said at a briefing, but declined to give an end date.

"The six sides need to jointly make that decision according to the progress of the talks," he said, adding that "the road is complex and full of twists".

"We can't rely on one round to resolve all the issues. But we are not pessimistic as long as the six sides bear in mind the aim of denuclearisation and the peace and stability of the Korean peninsula."

The talks between China, the United States, the two Koreas, Russia and Japan were adjourned on August 7 after Washington rejected Pyongyang's demand for its "unconditional right" to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

They were scheduled to resume in the last week of August but North Korea refused to return, saying war games between South Korea and the United States created the wrong atmosphere.

Despite the agreement to meet again, few signs have emerged since the fourth round recessed after 13 days of fruitless talks that North Korea or the United States are willing to budge from their positions.

Pyongyang is insisting that the United States should allow it the right to use civilian nuclear energy in return for disbanding its atomic arms program, a demand which has been rejected by Washington.

North Korea reiterated its position in Tuesday's Rodong Sinmun, the communist party newspaper.

"It is unimaginable for (North Korea) to dismantle its independent nuclear power industry built with so much effort, yielding to outsiders' pressure, without getting any proposal for compensating for the loss of nuclear energy," it said.

The United States points to Pyongyang's failure to confine such a program to peaceful purposes in the past.

It has also argued that the package being put together by the other nations in the talks includes conventional energy supplies that would replace the energy capacity of nuclear reactors.

South Korea has already offered to supply its northern neighbour with large supplies of electricity if it renounces nuclear weapons.

South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-Young expressed optimism Thursday, saying there was room for the US and North Korea to reach a compromise on the right to peaceful nuclear activities.

But he described the North's demand for the completion of two light water reactors by a US-led consortium to generate power as a "tougher" question.

Under a 1994 deal, which ended a previous weapons showdown, the United States agreed to provide fuel for North Korea until the consortium built the reactors.

But their construction has been suspended amid the nuclear standoff, which flared in October 2002 when the US accused the North of developing a secret uranium-enrichment program.

Pyongyang has denied the US charges but declared in February this year that it had already built nuclear bombs.

"We hope all sides will seize this opportunity, based on a spirit of fairness, equity and mutual respect and understanding, to find a commonly acceptable solution that would take care of all sides' concerns and interests," Qin said.

Both Russia and Japan also weighed in on the upcoming talks, with Tokyo saying it hoped for an agreement abolishing the North's nuclear arms drive.

Russia's vice foreign minister said the positions of the six countries involved in the negotiations "have never been as close" since the start of talks two years ago.

"We see that there is real agreement on most of the points of a joint statement that is to set out the common objectives and principles of the six-nation talks," Minister Alexander Alexeyev was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

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