A North Korean foreign ministry spokesman said Pyongyang would attend a new round of talks only after it received rewards including an end to US sanctions and the resumption of suspended US oil deliveries. In return, Pyongyang would freeze its nuclear facilities, the spokesman said.

Bush, following talks Tuesday with China's Premier Wen Jiabao at the White House, rejected the proposal.

"The goal of the United States is not for a freeze of the nuclear program; the goal is to dismantle a nuclear weapons program in a verifiable and irreversible way," he said, adding "that is a clear message that we are sending to the North Koreans."

Officials in Seoul were closely examining the statement carried by Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency which South Korean Foreign Minister Yoon Young-Kwan said reflected long-standing North Korean demands.

He said South Korea had not ruled out a new round of talks in Beijing this year bringing together the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States.

China hosted the first round of talks in Beijing in August that failed to break the impasse triggered in October last year when Washington said Pyongyang had admitted to running an enriched uranium program in violation of a 1994 nuclear freeze accord.

After the United States suspended fuel oil deliveries in retaliation, North Korea kicked out international monitors from its nuclear complex at Yongbyon north of Pyongyang, withdrew from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and said it had nuclear weapons and was reprocessing spent fuel to build more.

Pyongyang's latest wish list comes as parties to the talks seek agreement on basic positions prior to the meeting.

Washington rejected a North Korean proposal last week for "simultaneous" measures whereby North Korea would reportedly agree to dismantle its nuclear weapons in return for aid and other benefits.

Judging that proposal too favourable to the Stalinist state, Japan, South Korea and the United States last week drafted their own counter-proposal that was handed to Chinese officials in Beijing on Monday and was to be passed on to North Korea.

Rejecting "simultaneous" action, the allies focused on "coordinated steps," whereby broad agreement on measures including a possible multilateral security guarantee for North Korea would be reached.

Few specific benefits would be offered to Pyongyang and Washington would maintain a central demand that North Korea scrap its nuclear programs in a verifiable manner.

The North Korean foreign ministry spokesman said Pyongyang was deeply disappointed by the US attitude, but Yoon indicated that the latest North Korean demands were not a rejection of the new US-backed proposals.

"The statement appears to have been issued before North Korea obtained a draft agreement worked out by the United States, Japan and South Korea," he said.

Analysts in Seoul said the North Korean statement may not be entirely negative. Agreement on a new round of talks could be close, said Kim Sung-Han of the Institute for Foreign Affairs and National Security here.

"It's classic North Korean bargaining tactics. When they are close to agreeing to talks, the stakes suddenly get higher," he said.

An alternative view, said Koh Yu-Hwan, a North Korean expert at Seoul's Dongguk University, is that Pyongyang wants a return to square one.

"North Korea apparently finds the US proposal unsatisfactory and wants to renegotiate from scratch an agreement that may be reached at the six-way talks," he said.

WAR.WIRE