The exact date has not yet been fixed but Ban was expected to meet his US counterpart Condoleezza Rice and Christopher Hill, US chief delegate to the nuclear talks, around August 20, it said.

Ban will be accompanied by Vice Foreign Minister Song Min-Soon, South Korea's chief delegate.

Ban last week met his Chinese counterpart Li Zhaoxing in Beijing to discuss how to move forward when the talks resume in the Chinese capital later this month.

The six-party talks broke off on August 7 for three weeks without any sign of agreement on how to get the Stalinst state to abandon atomic weapons.

The talks, which involve the two Koreas, the United States, China, Russia and Japan, are scheduled to resume in the final week of August.

A key sticking point was Pyongyang's insistence on the right to retain peaceful atomic reactors to produce energy, a demand rejected by the United States.

China and Russia had said they were not opposed to Pyongyang's peaceful use of nuclear energy, while Ban was quoted last week saying the issue needed to be discussed.

Washington and Seoul have denied they are split on the issue.

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