"North Koreans fully recognize the usefulness of the six-way talks," Ban, who is accompanying President Roh Moo-Hyun on a European tour, said in a telephone interview with a Seoul-based MBC radio program.

"I guess North Koreans are thinking about when they can come back to talks and under what justification."

South Korea "is aware of what stances North Koreans take" about resuming the stalled talks through various indirect channels, he added.

Joseph DeTrani, the US special envoy for negotiations with North Korea, left Sunday for China, South Korea and Japan in a bid to jump-start the talks.

DeTrani's Asia trip followed his two meetings with North Korean officials in New York last week.

Three rounds of six-way talks -- involving the United States, China, the two Koreas, Japan and Russia -- were held. But the North boycotted a fourth round scheduled for September, citing "hostile" US policy.

The stand-off began in October 2002 when US officials claimed Pyongyang admitted having run a secret uranium-enrichment program in breach of a 1994 nuclear safeguards accord.

North Koreans denied the US claims but fired up its mothballed plutonium-based program after expelling International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors.

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei told the New York Times he was certain that the nuclear material his agency once monitored in North Korea had been converted into fuel for four to six nuclear bombs.

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