The dismantling will be the priority demand when the United States, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia sit down with North Korea for six-way nuclear talks again early next month, Yonhap news agency said.

The new round of talks, a date for which has yet to be fixed, is widely expected to open in Beijing in the week of February 5, according to officials.

It aims to agree on how to implement the joint statement reached in September 2005, under which North Korean agreed to stop its nuclear facilities in return for security guarantees as well as economic and energy aid.

The North's facilities, subject to the shutdown, include a five megawatt reactor, a fuel reprocessing plant, a radiochemical lab and two reactors of 50 megawatts and 200 megawatts now under construction, Yonhap said.

"We want the facilities to be shut down, not just frozen or suspended," an unnamed government source told Yonhap.

"What the United States, South Korea and other six-way talks partners -- except North Korea -- want is to make it difficult for Pyongyang to fire up the the nuclear facilities again."

"The idea is that North Korea should begin the dismantling (of its key facilities) within several months after agreeing on initial steps to take for the implementation" of the 2005 pact, another source said.

A rare one-on-one meeting earlier this month in Berlin between chief US negotiator, Christopher Hill, and his North Korean counterpart, Kim Kye-Gwan, tackled the issue, according to Yonhap.

But North Korea reserved its final response, as it still stuck to its demand for US financial sanctions on the communist regime to be lifted first before substantive talks begin in the nuclear issue.

The six-way talks resumed in December after a 13-month hiatus. The talks took on urgency because North Korea tested its first atom bomb test on October 9, but the negotiations produced no tangible results.

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