An official announcement of the resumption date is likely Monday morning, Aso said, as the United States and North Korea prepared to discuss financial sanctions that the communist regime says are hindering the talks' progress.

Senior US Treasury official Daniel Glaser arrived in Beijing on Sunday to discuss the sanctions with his North Korean counterparts, a US embassy spokesman said.

Analysts say a resolution to the sanctions dispute is crucial to tackling the broader issue of Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions, which are under discussion in the parallel talks involving the US, Russia, China, Japan and the two Koreas.

Glaser, deputy assistant secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes, will meet North Korean officials on Tuesday, the embassy spokesman told AFP.

Glaser said on arrival that he hoped to have "productive meetings" while in the Chinese capital, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

The imminent restart of further six-nations talks looked increasingly certain after Aso told reporters: "North Korea has been mentioning the eighth (of February). If the United States accepts it, it will be the eighth."

"A conclusive announcement is expected to be made on Monday morning," Aso said while speaking in the northern Japanese city of Tomakomai, local news agencies reported.

Aso said China, which has hosted the six-nation talks since August 2003, will ensure that "it will not lose its face again" by failing to help produce any result.

The six-way talks last took place in December after a 13-month break during which North Korea tested an atom bomb for the first time.

That session ended in deadlock, with North Korea sticking to its demands that the United States end the financial sanctions against a Macau-based bank accused of laundering money for the impoverished communist regime.

A pact for North Korea to dismantle its nuclear programme in return for diplomatic recognition and food and energy aid was agreed in September 2005.

But it was never implemented because of Pyongyang's protests over the sanctions that Washington imposed the same month.

The US claimed Banco Delta Asia served as key conduit for North Korean counterfeiting and money laundering. Pyongyang has denied Washington's allegations.

At the expected new round of talks, the US and its six-nations partners will demand that North Korea begins to break up its key nuclear facilities within months, a South Korean news report said Sunday.

The dismantling will be the priority demand when the parties sit down, Yonhap news agency said.

"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, a source told Yonhap.

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