US Assistant Secretary of James Kelly and South Korean deputy foreign minister Lee Soo-Hyuck met as part of intense diplomacy in recent weeks ahead of the fourth round of six-party talks to end the nearly two-year-old nuclear crisis.

"This is part of a regular pattern of diplomatic consultations that we have with our partners in this process," US State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said ahead of the Kelly-Lee talks.

He said the meeting was to prepare for both the working group as well as the plenary of the six-party talks among host China, the United States, Russia, North Korea, Japan and South Korea by the end of September.

Asian diplomats and analysts familar with the talks said the United States had to consult with allies South Korea and Japan as it prepared what could be a counteroffer to woo North Korea into dismantling its nuclear weapons arsenal.

The United States had tabled a plan at the third round of talks giving Pyongyang three months to shut down and seal its nuclear weapons facilities in return for economic and diplomatic rewards and security guarantees.

Pyongyang appears to have rejected that outright.

A spokesman for the Stalinist state's foreign ministry told Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency recently that the US plan, devised after consultations with South Korea and Japan, had "little worthy to be discussed."

"The emphasis now is: keeping the United States, Japan and South Korea united in how they will respond," said Jon Wolfsthal, deputy director for non-proliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington-based private group.

Wolfsthal said he felt the Bush administration was bent on ensuring that negotiations continued but that it was not eager to reach a settlement.

This is because any settlement will be viewed in a political context, he said.

"My sense is that while the Bush administration will be attacked from the left if they don't reach an agreement, they will be attacked from the right if they do reach an agreement.

"And it is more important for the Bush administration to secure the right in this election than it is to reach out to the left," he added.

Senator John Kerry, Bush's rival in the presidential race in November, had vowed to open direct talks with Pyongyang to settle the nuclear dispute if he came to power.

The Bush administration hopes the possibility of a negotiated agreement will keep the North Koreans from creating a crisis but it is not clear whether it has committed itself to actually negotiating a settlement, analysts say.

North Korea's ambassador to the United Nations, Park Gil Yon, who attended a private forum in Washington this month on the nuclear crisis, reportedly said the three-month window given by the United States "was far too short."

An Asian diplomat said Kelly, Washington's chief negotiator at the six-party talks, was expected to brief Lee on the outcome of discussions last week between US and China, North Korea's closest ally and aid provider.

The "in-depth" meeting in Beijing was between US special envoy Joseph DeTrani and China's pointman on North Korea, Ning Fukui.

Ning was in Seoul to discuss meeting preparations ahead of talks in Japan.

The nuclear standoff erupted in October 2002 when the United States accused Pyongyang of operating a nuclear weapons program based on enriched uranium, violating a 1994 nuclear freeze of its separate plutonium producing program.

Pyongyang has denied running the uranium-based program, but has again fired up its once-mothballed plutonium-based program.

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