Li Changchun, a member of the Chinese Communist Party's powerful nine-strong top committee, will pay a "goodwill" visit to North Korea from September 10-13, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Li will lead a delegation from the Communist Party and government, said the report.

No details were given on the purpose of the visit but the standoff over Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program is widely believed to be the key reason Li is being sent to North Korea.

China's foreign ministry indicated Thursday that Beijing was still hoping to hold a fourth round of six-party talks by the end of September as originally agreed.

Its position came despite statements from Pyongyang in recent days questioning Washington's intentions and expressing doubts about the value of such talks.

"To ensure a nuclear-free Korean peninsula through peaceful negotiations is in the interest of all sides and is conducive towards the region's stability," foreign ministry spokesman Kong Quan said at a regular briefing.

"We hope that all parties can, according to the consensus reached at the third six-party talks, hold the next talks and the working group meeting before the end of September," he said.

"To ensure this, all parties must show a certain level of pragmatism and flexibility."

At the previous six-party talks in June, which ended without concrete results, the two Koreas, the United States, China, Russia and Japan agreed to meet again in Beijing by the end of September for new discussions.

Kong on Thursday had refused to confirm a report that China was dispatching Li to Pyongyang for emergency talks with North Korea's reclusive leader Kim Jong-Il.

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

Pyongyang has denied running the uranium-based program but has restarted its plutonium program.