Seoul's Chosun Ilbo newspaper said Hill has already confronted Pyongyang with alleged evidence of its nuclear links to Syria -- one of the two key issues holding up progress on the landmark denuclearisation deal.

Chosun said Hill handed over a list of North Korean officials and engineers said to be involved in the technology transfer during a recent bilateral meeting with his North Korean counterpart, Kim Kye-Gwan.

The newspaper, quoting a diplomatic source, said Kim denied any knowledge of the list.

Chosun did not say where the encounter took place. The two envoys had bilateral talks in Beijing in February and in Geneva last month, with no tangible progress announced.

The South's foreign ministry declined comment on the Chosun report.

Meanwhile, Rodong Sinmun, newspaper of the North's ruling communist party, took aim at a recent article by former US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton.

Such hardliners, it said, "only wish to see the talks collapse and the situation deteriorate."

The six-nation deal, involving the United States, China, the two Koreas, Japan and Russia, is also stalled over a promised declaration from the North of all its past nuclear activities.

The North says it submitted the declaration in November. But the United States says it has not fully accounted for a suspected secret uranium enrichment weapons programme and for the alleged nuclear proliferation to Syria.

Last September, Israel launched an air strike in the Arab state, which Western media reports said targeted a nuclear plant developed with North Korea.

As part of the deal, the North is disabling atomic plants that produce bomb-making plutonium. It categorically denies any separate secret uranium programme or any proliferation, and says the stalemate could slow down the disablement.

The US and South Korea pushed for progress at a Washington meeting last week between Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and visiting Foreign Minister Yu Myung-Hwan.

Yu told reporters that "time and patience" are running out.

The US embassy said Hill will stay in South Korea until leaving for Indonesia on Thursday. It had no comment on media speculation about a possible Hill-Kim Kye-Gwan meeting in a third country, but said the US envoy has no plan to visit China during this trip.

Hill will hold a dinner meeting on Tuesday with his counterpart Chun Yung-Woo. He is scheduled to meet Vice Foreign Minister Kwon Jong-Rak and Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Yong-Joon on Wednesday.

All rights reserved. © 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.