The delegation from China's lower house, the China People's Political Consultative Conference, was led by vice chairman Li Zhaozhuo, North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency said without giving details.

Working-level talks in Beijing ahead of the next round of six-nation negotiations are yet to be scheduled and there have been repeated warnings from North Korea that it will pull out of the process.

The stand-off began in October 2002 when the United States accused Pyongyang of operating a nuclear weapons programme based on enriched uranium, violating a 1994 agreement.

All rights reserved. © 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.