The communist state, which tested an atomic weapon in October 2006, is set to start disabling its plutonium-producing plants early next week under a six-nation accord which also requires it to declare all nuclear programmes.

"We're expecting the first draft declaration... probably in a matter of the next couple of weeks," said Hill, an assistant secretary of state and the chief US envoy to six-nation talks on denuclearising the North.

"The idea is that as we receive that, we have some information on programmes we would want to have follow-on discussions on, with the understanding that by the end of the year we will have a complete declaration that everyone would agree is complete."

The North has promised by year-end to disable the plants and declare a list of all programmes including a suspected highly enriched uranium project.

"I think if we can get through this list, I'm hopeful that we will create a situation where the momentum will push us through and we'll get through the entire process of denuclearisation and soon in the coming year," Hill told reporters after talks with his South Korean counterpart Chun Young-Woo.

Hill said a nine-member US expert team would travel to the North's main nuclear complex at Yongbyon later Friday or Saturday to prepare to supervise the disabling of three plants there.

Under the February accord the North will receive energy aid worth hundreds of millions of dollars for disablement. It shut the Yongbyon plants in July but disablement aims to put them out of action for up to a year.

After a 1994 denuclearisation pact fell apart in 2002, the North quickly resumed production of bomb-making plutonium and now has an estimated 45-65 kilograms (99-143 pounds) -- enough to build several bombs.

If the North goes on next year to dismantle the plants and give up its plutonium and weapons, it can expect normalised relations with Washington and a peace pact to replace the armistice which ended the 1950-1953 Korean War.

Hill said a peace treaty, and the lifting of UN nuclear-related sanctions, would come only after North Korea is nuclear-free.

"The sanctions are there until the DPRK (North Korea) gets out of the nuclear business," he said.

While negotiations on a pact could begin after "substantial disablement," Hill warned: "We cannot conclude a peace process until the time that there is really a denuclearisation.

"We are not going to have a peace agreement with a nuclearised DPRK."

The South and North Korean leaders, after a rare summit last month, called for a meeting of three or four leaders to declare an end to the war. The call sparked accusations that Seoul is moving too fast to make peace.

The six-nation talks group the two Koreas, the US, Japan, China and Russia.

Hill earlier this week visited China, where he met his North Korean counterpart Kim Kye-Gwan, and was going on to Japan later Friday.

South Korean nuclear envoy Chun arrived in Beijing later Friday for his own dinner talks with Kim about the disablement, the foreign ministry said.

Japan's ties with North Korea are soured by Pyongyang's alleged refusal to account for all the Japanese civilians it kidnapped in the Cold War era.

"We have continuously encouraged the DPRK (North Korea) to address this issue, to return any abductees in the DPRK, to properly investigate this issue and to make sure things of this kind never, ever happen again," Hill said.

"I don't think that the DPRK has a very good future if it can't achieve a good relationship with Japan."

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