"The three countries have finished work on the wording of a joint statement to be issued" at fresh talks on the crisis, Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-Hyuck said.

The South Korean envoy for nuclear crisis talks said the draft envisaged a security guarantee for Pyongyang in return for its declaration that it would scrap its nuclear program.

"It will be conveyed soon to North Korea through China," he told a press conference Sunday, adding the statement was proposed first by China and South Korea.

The draft was endorsed at talks between Lee and his US and Japanese counterparts who met in Washington last week to fine-tune preparations for a new round of six-nation talks on ending the year-long impasse, he said.

US and South Korean officials said they still hoped six-nation talks could start soon after a first round in August ended with little progress.

But Lee said the six-nation meeting, originally expected to take place in Beijing in the third week of December, could be delayed.

"Talks can still come as planned but time is running short," he said.

A senior US official said last week that Pyongyang was attempting to induce US concessions in writing on certain steps to defuse the crisis before the talks begin.

One issue vital is "sequencing" -- the order of steps Pyongyang and Washington would both agree to take, the official said.

According to news reports in Seoul and Tokyo, North Korea was reluctant to accept Washington's demand that the Stalinist country pledge to return to an international nuclear safeguard accord.

North Korea's nuclear activities have been shut off from the outside world since the country pulled out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and kicked out international monitors in January this year.

The North recently turned down Washington's long-standing demand that it scrap its nuclear weapons verifiably and irreversibly as an initial step to dialogue.

Pyongyang says it cannot give up its nuclear weapons without a security assurance.

South Korean officials want both Washington and Pyongyang to moderate their positions, while the United States accused North Korea of demanding major concessions before the dialogue started.

Lee Jong-Seok, the architect of President Roh Moo-Hyun's North Korea policy, left Sunday for the United States for a five-day visit to meet with US security and defense officials.

Lee, deputy secretary general of the National Security Council, is to meet his US counterpart Steven Hadley, the deputy national security advisor for the White House, and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Richard Solomon, president of the Institute of Peace.

The crisis erupted after Washington said in October last year that North Korea had broken a 1994 nuclear freeze agreement by embarking on an enriched uranium program.

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