The Stalinist state's official Korean Central News Agency said a fourth round of the stalled six-nation talks would take place only when the United States agrees to its demands.

"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 was quoted as saying.

The statement, which followed a rare meeting between US and North Korean officials in New York on Monday, punctured hopes raised by China for an early resumption of talks.

Beijing's ambassador to the United Nations, Wang Guangya, had indicated that North Korea had decided to attend a new round of talks soon, possibly within "the next few weeks".

The United States believes that North Korea, an isolated communist country battling a food crisis, may be developing and planning to test nuclear weapons and has called on its neighbours to help resolve the crisis.

China has hosted past talks with the two Koreas, Japan, the United States and Russia, but North Korea has boycotted the negotiations since June 2004 and said it will return only once conditions are "mature".

As a precondition, it has called for an end to US "hostility" and verbal criticism of the regime and its leader Kim Jong-Il.

Pyongyang bristled at US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's reference to North Korea as an "outpost of tyranny" in January and Bush's more recent reference to the North Korean leader as a "tyrant" who starves his people.

In Wednesday's statement, the unidentified foreign ministry official also condemned US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's for "slandering" North Korea and undermining efforts to bring Pyongyang back to six-party talks.

"At the recent Asia Security Conference held in Singapore, Rumsfeld malignantly slandered the DPRK, asserting its regime is keen on the arms buildup only and it is a miserable country," the spokesman said.

"This clearly tells he is an imbecile quite ignorant of diplomacy, dialogue and negotiation."

Pyongyang's latest verbal attack came just days after senior US and North Korean diplomats met in New York on Monday.

Joseph DiTrani, US special envoy to the six-party talks, and Jim Foster, head of the State Department's Office of Korean Affairs, met with Pyongyang's UN ambassador and his deputy for the second time in less than a month.

The US State Department said North Korea had said at the meeting that it would return to the talks, although no date was mentioned.

But the Pyongyang foreign ministry spokesman on Wednesday complained of receiving mixed signals from Washington.

"The US is urging its dialogue partner to come out for the talks while seriously insulting and provoking it at a time when a DPRK-U.S. contact is underway in the direction of the resumption of the six-party talks," he said.

"The remarks made by Rumsfeld against this backdrop can be uttered only by a stupid who does not know what is politics."

Experts and officials said North Korea, despite the latest comments, may be inching towards a new round of talks, but that nothing concrete was yet known.

Chong Woo-Seong, foreign policy advisor to South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun, said that, without a date for new talks, optimism could too easily be misplaced.

Peter Beck, of the International Crisis Group, said that Seoul was always looking for good news in the nuclear standoff.

"So when Seoul is cautious, it is a pretty good indication that there may be less than meets the eye here," he said.

All rights reserved. © 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.