The eight-person team is visiting Pyongyang after North Korea agreed last week to disable key facilities at its Yongbyon nuclear complex and declare all other nuclear programmes by the end of the year.

Japan's Kyodo News said in a dispatch from Pyongyang that the two sides had opened talks at a hotel in the North Korean capital.

"I think we're going to have a productive discussion on issues related to disablement," Kyodo quoted Sung Kim, the head of the US delegation, as saying.

Kim said the United States also hoped to reach an agreement with North Korea on how exactly to define the disablement required by year-end.

The US experts are expected to stay a week in North Korea, during which they will visit the Yongbyon complex, some 90 kilometres (55 miles) north of Pyongyang.

North Korea shut down the Soviet-era nuclear reactor in July as part of the six-nation process, which involves China, Japan, the two Koreas, Russia and the United States.

North Korea, which tested an atom bomb a year ago, was promised energy aid as well as diplomatic and security guarantees in return for ending its nuclear weapons drive.

The United States, mindful of past experience, has stressed that Pyongyang must permanently disable its nuclear facilities.

North Korea previously shut down the Yongbyon reactor under a 1994 agreement clinched during the administration of then president Bill Clinton.

But it withdrew from the pact after George W. Bush's administration in 2002 accused the North of developing a secret uranium enrichment programme.

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