The six-member delegation led by Republican Representative Curt Weldon was greeted at an unspecified North Korean airport "by an official concerned," the North's Korean Central News Agency said.

In a separate dispatch, the agency said US Congressman Tom Lantos and his separate party left Pyongyang after a four-day visit that included talks on the weapons issue.

Weldon said Monday during his stopover in Russia's far eastern city of Khabarovsk that his group hoped to persuade North Korea to take part in six-party talks on its nuclear weapons drive.

The United States was not demanding regime change in North Korea and would work with its leader Kim Jong-Il, he said. However, Washington could do nothing until North Korea agreed to renounce its nuclear program, Weldon added.

The delegation hoped it would follow the example of Libya, which renounced its weapons of mass destruction last year, Weldon said, adding that the possibility of a meeting between the congressmen and Kim Jong-Il was not ruled out.

The congressmen would stay until Friday in North Korea, where they hoped to show they were not enemies in spite of that country's strained relations with the United States, he said.

Tensions between North Korea and the United States increased when a standoff erupted in October 2002 over Pyongyang's nuclear programme.

Three rounds of multilateral talks, involving the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States, have since then taken place but produced little tangible results.

North Korea boycotted a fourth round of the talks scheduled for Beijing in September and no date has been set to resume negotiations.