The three-day trilateral meeting opens in Pyongyang on Tuesday in a follow-up to the first round held in Shenyang last month, the South's foreign ministry said in a statement.

Talks will focus on how to provide non-fuel aid, such as energy-related facilities and equipment, it said.

In February, North Korea agreed to disable its plutonium-producing plants and declare all nuclear programmes by year's end in exchange for a million tonnes of fuel oil or equivalent energy aid.

Seoul, which has led the working group on energy aid to North Korea, says the promised aid would be half in fuel oil and half in alternative forms.

The announcement on aid talks followed news reports that the nuclear disarmament process had hit a snag with the North refusing to address its suspected highly enriched uranium weapons programme to US satisfaction.

The Washington Post said Friday that minute traces of enriched uranium had been found on aluminium tubing from North Korea, alleging this appeared to hint at a secret nuclear programme.

But North Korea has repeatedly denied having an uranium enrichment programme (UEP) at talks with Sung Kim, a top Korea expert from the US State Department, in Pyongyang last week, Yonhap news agency reported.

Sung Kim returned to Seoul on Friday after a three-day trip aimed at reviewing work on disabling the North's key nuclear plants. He briefed South Korean officials on his visit, a foreign ministry spokesman told AFP Sunday but declined to provide further details.

"North Korea remains unchanged in its denial of the existence of a UEP programme. There have been few changes as far as the North's nuclear programme declaration is concerned," an unnamed source told Yonhap.

Under the landmark February deal, China, South Korea, the United States, Russia and Japan take turns to provide the energy aid to North Korea.

The North has already been receiving fuel oil since it shut down its main nuclear facilities at Yongbyon in July.

Seoul shipped 5,010 tonnes of steel to North Korea earlier this month in a first batch of aid in alternative forms. China is to take the following turn, with its aid items to be decided at the Pyongyang meeting.

The North conducted its first atomic bomb test in October 2006 before returning to negotiations and agreeing to give up its nuclear arms in return for economic aid and other political and diplomatic gains.

But North Korea's army general said Sunday that US war drills and arms build-up were still a source of tension, Pyongyang's official media reported.

"Poliltical tension is still being created by the constant US war provocations on the Korean peninsula today," General Kim Kyok Sik, the North's army chief of staff, told the Korean Central News Agency.

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