Ning Fukui will hold talks with South Korean officials and fly to Tokyo Tuesday for similar meetings, the Yonhap news agency said.

Japan, China, the two Koreas, Russia and the United States agreed at the last round of six-way talks in Beijing in June to convene again by the end of September to seek to break the 21-month-old deadlock.

China is preparing to convene a meeting of working level officials from the six nations next month ahead of the main session.

Ning met with his US counterpart Joseph DeTrani in Beijing last week. DeTrani reaffirmed a key Washington demand that all Pyongyang's nuclear programs must be addressed if the talks were to succeed.

The United States has called for a step-by-step dismantling of Pyongyang's plutonium and uranium weapons programs in return for aid and security guarantees and easing of its political and economic isolation.

North Korea, which denies it is running a uranium scheme, said at earlier talks it was ready to freeze its nuclear program for immediate rewards but omitted its alleged uranium enrichment program from the offer.

The impasse blew up in October 2002 when Washington said the Stalinist state had broken a 1994 nuclear freeze by launching a secret nuclear weapons program.

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