Powell said Pyongyang would see numerous benefits in the near-term, including security assurances, if it followed the principle of "word-for-word, deed-for-deed" laid out in the US proposal.

"We have to see deeds before we are prepared to put something on the table," he told reporters at a news conference on the fringes of a Southeast Asian regional security forum here.

"We don't think this will take long, we don't think that what's been asked for would be very difficult to achieve," Powell said.

"The United States has made clear to (North Korea) for the past several years that we want to help, we want to help (it) deal with its problems ... but only when it is absolutely clear that (it) has taken irreversible steps that will move us in the right direction toward de-nuclearization," he said.

The US plan, presented at multilateral talks on the nuclear crisis that ended Saturday in Beijing, gives North Korea three months to shut down and seal its nuclear weapons facilities in return for economic and diplomatic rewards.

The last round of so-called "six-party talks" between the United States, China, Japan, Russia and North and South Korea produced signs of flexibility but no concrete progress.

Although the participants did agree to meet again by the end of September, North Korea has rejected the US proposal as unrealistic.

Still, Powell said he hoped Pyongyang would give the offer serious study and stressed that Washington would do the same with any counter-proposal.

"We are anxious to see the North Koreans move together with us," he said on the eve of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) which he is due to attend and which includes all six parties involved in the nuclear talks.

Powell was coy when asked whether he would meet North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam-Sun face-to-face on Friday, although a Pyongyang official has said such a meeting could happen if Washington asked for one.

But he noted that Paek would be at the ARF plenary and said that at least in that group setting he would "assure (the North Koreans) that we will study their proposals seriously".

Powell and Paek met briefly on the sidelines of the July 2002 ARF in Brunei in what was the last face-to-face, cabinet-level contact between the two countries.

The crisis erupted in October of that year when US officials said Pyongyang had admitted it was violating an earlier nuclear disarmament pledge by developing weapons grade uranium.

Since then, the United States has repeatedly demanded that North Korea totally dismantle its atomic weapons programmes in a verifiable manner and refused to offer concessions until that was done.

But at the Beijing talks last week, that insistence was toned down slightly in a bid to cement a consensus among the six parties negotiating the matter, Powell said.

"We showed flexibility in our position last week because we wanted our colleagues in the six-party talks to recognize the United States was seeking a peaceful, diplomatic solution," he said.

In addition to North Korea, Powell said he would use his time at the ARF to discuss terrorism, including the threat of seaborne attacks in the piracy-prone Malacca Strait, and democratic reforms in Myanmar.

The US and Singapore fear that terrorists could hijack an oil or gas tanker and use it as a floating bomb in a maritime version of 9/11.

But Washington recently backed away from suggestions that US forces might help patrol the waterway separating Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia after it raised hackles in Indonesia and Malaysia.

About half the world's oil supplies pass through the strait.

The Al Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah has launched a spate of bombings in Indonesia and the Philippines in recent years and has plotted attacks in Thailand and Singapore. JI's nightclub bombings on the Indonesian island of Bali, which killed 202 people in October 2002, were the worst terror attacks since September 11.

Powell will be at odds with ASEAN on efforts to establish democracy in military-ruled member Myanmar.

The ministers on Wednesday dropped calls made last year for the release of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and merely "underlined the need for the involvement of all strata of Myanmar society in the ongoing national convention", which is drafting a constitution.

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