A key South Korean minister questioned Tuesday whether North Korea will ever give up its atomic weapons, saying its latest demands "put a great stumbling block" on the path to denuclearisation.

"With regard to the North Korean nuclear problem we are still stuck in a deep, dark tunnel," said Unification Minister Hyun In-Taek, Seoul's chief policymaker on the communist state, in a gloomy assessment.

"North Korea, without changing its own stance, is demanding the international community make concessions," Hyun said in a speech to foreign correspondents.

The North demands that United Nations sanctions be lifted before it returns to the six-party nuclear disarmament negotiations it quit last April.

It also says the United States must first agree to hold talks about a permanent peace pact for the peninsula.

"It has come to the point of using its return to the six-party talks as a bargaining chip," Hyun said. "If this continues, we can never be sure when the North Korean nuclear problem will be solved."

International efforts to bring Pyongyang back to the talks have intensified in recent months. US envoy Stephen Bosworth visited Pyongyang in December to try to bring it back to the forum, which groups the two Koreas, China, Russia, the United States and Japan.

US Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell was due in South Korea late Tuesday for talks on the nuclear issue and other topics.

The North "has, again, put a great stumbling block in its path towards decnuclearisation," Hyun said, referring to the latest demands.

"By making such claims that defy the expectations of the international community, it seems to be stepping further away from the denuclearisation talks.

"As North Korea continues to remain unclear about whether it will return to the six-party talks, we cannot stop raising a fundamental question on its commitment to denuclearise itself."

After its first atomic weapons test in October 2006, the North reaffirmed a six-party deal under which it would scrap its nuclear programmes in return for aid and major diplomatic benefits and security guarantees.

The talks bogged down in December 2008 in a dispute over ways to verify the North's dismantlement of its atomic plants.

Last year Pyongyang vowed to rebuild the plants. It tested its second nuclear weapon in May, incurring tighter UN sanctions.

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