The Asahi Shimbun, quoting anonymous US and North Korean sources, said that Washington was almost certain to reject the demand from Pyongyang, which in February said it had a nuclear deterrent to defend itself.

"We want to be treated as a nuclear-possessing power," North Korean Ambassador to the United Nations Pak Gil-Yon told the visiting US envoys at Monday's meeting in New York, according to the Asahi's evening edition.

The report said Pak offered no clear guidelines on what that treatment would mean other than to say that North Korea wanted to be on equal nuclear standing with the United States.

North Korea said Wednesday that it would only return to six-nation talks on its nuclear program which have been stalled for a year if Washington met unspecified conditions.

"As for the resumption of the six-party talks, it entirely depends on the US response to the DPRK's (North Korea's) call for creating conditions and an environment for their resumption," a North Korean foreign ministry spokesman said.

The statement came a day after the UN ambassador of China, Pyongyang's main ally and the host of the six-nation talks, predicted a resumption of negotiations within weeks.

The Asahi said some in the US government believe North Korea wants to be treated like Pakistan.

The South Asian nation was put under US sanctions after it and rival India tested nuclear weapons in 1998, but Islamabad is now a frontline ally in the US-led "war on terror".

According to the newspaper, John Lewis, a professor at Stanford University who recently visited North Korea, found Pyongyang was critical of six-way talks and it wanted the United States to remove its "nuclear threat" from the Korean peninsula.

The United States stations some 32,500 troops in South Korea and on Tuesday finished the deployment there of 15 US F-117 stealth bombers for four months of operations in what is seen as a pressure tactic aimed at Pyongyang.

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