Speaking after a rare visit to Pyongyang, Downer said North Korea also gave no assurances it would attend a new round of six-nation talks, the forum addressing the Stalinist state's nuclear ambitions.

"Their response to the US package is pretty negative," Downer told Australian reporters before he left the North Korean capital late Wednesday for Hong Kong.

But Downer said there were common elements in the thinking of both the United States and North Korea.

"Both sides, certainly, but all parties talk about a nuclear freeze and the eventual dismantlement of the nuclear programme," he said.

At the last round of six-nation talks in Beijing in June the United States said that if North Korea closed down all its nuclear weapons facilities over a three-month period, it would offer a package of economic and diplomatic rewards to the impoverished nation.

Washington also said it would give North Korea security guarantees that it would not be attacked. The United States currently has no diplomatic ties with North Korea, which is also on the US list of countries sponsoring terrorism.

North Korea rejected the proposals and said it wanted aid and guarantees before it went ahead with freezing its nuclear programmes.

Downer, who flew to Pyongyang Tuesday, held talks with his North Korean counterpart Paek Nam-Sun and parliamentary head Kim Yong-Nam.

His visit came as North Korea has been expressing scepticism about a possible new round of six-nation talks, which bring together China, the two Koreas, Japan, Russia and the United States.

Downer said he hoped his visit had given "some momentum" to the six-nation talks process. Asked if North Korea would attend a new round of talks, he said: "Well that remains to be seen. I hope so."

North Korea this week suggested it might not even attend a preparatory round of discussions to prepare for new six-nation talks.

North Korea said it "had nothing to expect" from the six-nation talks because of what it called a hardline US policy.

The stand-off over North Korea's quest for nuclear weapons erupted in October 2002 when the United States accused Pyongyang of operating a nuclear weapons programme based on enriched uranium, violating a 1994 nuclear freeze of its separate plutonium producing programme.

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

WAR.WIRE