Stephen Bosworth landed in Beijing for a visit that China said would include meetings with Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi and other top officials amid efforts to revive the stalled denuclearisation process.

Bosworth made no comments to reporters on his arrival but China's foreign ministry hoped the visit could help promote the six-nation disarmament effort.

"We hope we can take this opportunity to exchange views with the US... and jointly promote the six-party talks on denuclearising the Korean peninsula," ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters.

Under a landmark deal in 2007 with the United States and its partners, North Korea agreed to scrap its weapons-grade nuclear programmes in exchange for badly needed energy aid.

But diplomats from the United States, Russia, China, South Korea and Japan late last year hit a deadlock in the negotiations when North Korea baulked at demands to allow verification of disarmament moves.

Bosworth was to travel Thursday to Tokyo for talks with top Japanese officials.

He was then scheduled to fly on Saturday to Seoul, where he will meet Russian as well as South Korean officials, a spokewoman for the US embassy in Beijing told AFP.

The trip marks Bosworth's first involvement in the tortuous process, having recently taken over from Christopher Hill, the chief US negotiator on the issue under president George W. Bush.

Hill said last week that Bosworth, during his Asia visit, would also try to deter North Korea from test-firing a missile. Bosworth is due to return to the United States on March 10.

Pyongyang has said it is making brisk preparations to launch what it calls an experimental communications satellite. US officials fear it will amount to a test launch of a missile that could eventually carry a nuclear warhead.

Since they began in 2003, the six-party talks have proceeded in fits and starts amid repeated surprise demands by the mercurial North Korean regime, which detonated a nuclear device in 2006.