Before boarding a plane for Pyongyang, Kim Kye-Gwan said a statement agreed by the six on Sunday would reflect North Korea's demand to be taken off a US list of terrorism-sponsoring states, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported.

"The timeline was specified in the joint statement," Kim told reporters, according to Yonhap.

He said he expected the joint statement, still not disclosed to the public, would be released soon, the agency said.

The six nations -- the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia -- wrapped up four days of talks Sunday, after agreeing on a joint statement to push forward a landmark February disarmament deal.

The provisional agreement was then sent back to the governments for approval, as host nation China declared the start of a two-day recess.

Kim said Tuesday that he was satisfied with the joint statement, Yonhap reported, however Japan denied that a timeframe for North Korea to be removed of the US terror list had been agreed to.

"If Kim Kye-Gwan said there is a timetable for delisting on the statement, that is not true," Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura, the government's top spokesman, told reporters on Tokyo.

Although specifics of the agreement have not been officially released, the negotiations were focused on devising a plan for North Korea to disable its key nuclear facilities and declare all its atomic programmes.

Machimura said that the agreement was not entirely satisfactory for Japan but a step in the right direction.

Japan planned to decide by the end of Tuesday whether to approve the provisional agreement, other Japanese officials said.

No details have been made available on when the statement will be released or if the chief negotiators will meet again at the end of the recess.

Calls to China's foreign ministry for information about if or when the talks will restart went unanswered.

The complex six-party negotiations, which began in 2003, failed to prevent North Korea carrying out its first atomic weapons test last year but eventually led to the February deal.

Pyongyang has repeatedly demanded that Washington remove its designation as a state sponsor of terrorism and cancel sanctions applied under the US Trading with the Enemy Act, under the February deal.

The United States has maintained that such bold moves would come only after North Korea takes further steps toward disarmament.

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