Rodong Sinmun, the North's ruling party newspaper, said the freeze showed Washington was backtracking on an agreement to end the North Korean nuclear standoff adopted at the close of the fourth round of six-party talks held in September.

"The US behavior is little short of hamstringing the sincere efforts made by the DPRK (North Korea) for the success of the fifth round of the six-party talks," Rodong said in a commentary monitored here.

Host China has proposed a resumption of talks aimed at dismantling North Korea's nuclear weapons program on November 9, a Western diplomat said Tuesday, and is awaiting confirmation from five other dialogue partners -- the two Koreas, the United States, Japan and Russia.

Last week the United States blacklisted eight North Korean entities as proliferators of weapons of mass destruction and froze assets they had under US jurisdiction.

It also prohibited all transactions between US citizens and the entities, according to a statement from the Treasury Department.

Rodong urged the United States to lift the sanctions, saying Washington "would be well advised to give up its futile sanctions against the DPRK (North Korea."

North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong-Il pledged to return to the talks when he received Chinese President Hu Jintao on a three-day visit that ended Sunday.

The latest six-way talks ended in September with a joint statement of principles under which North Korea would give up its nuclear weapons program in return for energy and security guarantees.

But Pyongyang later warned it would not dismantle its nuclear arsenal before the United States supplies it with a light-water atomic reactor to generate electricity.

The United States says North Korea must first disarm.

The nuclear crisis flared up in October 2002 after the United States accused North Korea of running a secret uranium-enrichment program.