The agreement came at talks between Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei, Beijing's chief nuclear negotiator in the six-way talks, and South Korean officials, a foreign ministry official here said.

"Noting that North Korea had held one-on-one negotiations with the United States within the framework of six-nation talks, China and South Korea agreed that such a dialogue format is important in future talks," he said.

The meeting between Wu and South Korean officials came amid a flurry of diplomatic activity aimed at bringing North Korea back to the negotiating table.

The Stalinist state on February 10 announced it possessed nuclear weapons and was withdrawing indefinitely from the six-party talks aimed at curbing its nuclear weapons drive.

But North Korea leader Kim Jong-Il later told Chinese communist party official Wang Jiarui that Pyongyang would return to talks if "certain conditions" were met.

"During Wang's trip there, North Korea did not mention any conditions," the official said.

"There was a consensus between South Korea and China that North Korea wants (other countries) to create a favorable environment ... before it attends the six-party talks," he added.

North Korea's official media later on Wednesday "reclarified" its stance on the talks, calling on the United States to provide "conditions and justification" for them to resume.

"We will go to the talks any time if the US takes a trustworthy sincere attitude and moves to provide conditions and justification for the resumption of the six-party talks," the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) quoted the foreign ministry as saying.

It also called for an apology for US President George W. Bush's 2002 description of North Korea as part of an "axis of evil" and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's comment in January that Pyongyang was an "outpost of tyranny".

China's Wu arrived here earlier in the day for a three-day trip which included talks with South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon.

"The government has urged and now urges again North Korea to return to six-way talks without any delay," Ban said ahead of his 50-minute closed-door meeting with Wu.

Wu said China and South Korea have agreed to denuclearize the Korean peninsula for peace and stability in the region and to continue to push for six-way talks.

On Thursday, Wu may meet US Ambassador to Seoul Christopher Hill, who heads Washington's team to the six-party talks, Yonhap news agency said.

Wu's trip to Seoul heralds another busy round of diplomacy, as Ban earlier said US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would visit South Korea and other East Asian countries later this month for talks on North Korea.

The foreign ministers of South Korea and China already held a telephone conversation Monday to repeat their joint call for North Korea to return soon to six-party talks.

Top negotiators from South Korea, the United States and Japan met in Seoul Saturday to fine-tune their strategy. They jointly urged Pyongyang to drop any preconditions for returning to talks.

The North Korean statement issued late on Wednesday said that the US dropping its "hostile policy" was not a precondition for the talks to start again.

The two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia, have met three times since 2003, with the last round held in June. North Korea boycotted a fourth round scheduled for last September, citing "hostile" US policy.

The nuclear standoff erupted in October 2002 when the United States accused North Korea of operating a program based on highly enriched uranium.

Pyongyang denied that charge but restarted a plutonium-based program frozen under a 1994 arms control agreement.

South Korean officials have dismissed North Korea's latest claim to have nuclear weapons as a tactic to win concessions from the United States ahead of new talks.

But Washington believes the Stalinist state may already possess one or two crude nuclear devices.

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