Stephen Bosworth, the US special representative for North Korean policy, is to visit Pyongyang on December 8 for talks with the isolated communist regime that has carried out a series of nuclear arms and missile tests.

The US government has informed Tokyo officials that the North Korean side had recently told it it would "present the schedule on when it will return to the talks if Mr Bosworth's visit comes true," the Sankei Shimbun reported.

The date of the North's possible return was still unknown, the conservative paper said, quoting anonymous Japanese government sources.

"North Korea probably decided to give a 'souvenir' (to Bosworth) as it has been craving direct talks with the United States," the Sankei quoted a Japanese foreign ministry official as saying.

The daily added it was far from clear whether a North Korean return to the six-year-old talks with South Korea, the United States, China, Russia and Japan would lead to concrete progress in stemming its nuclear ambitions.

No immediate comment on the report was available from Japan's foreign ministry.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency, quoting an unidentified official Sunday, said Seoul saw prospects for the US-North Korean meeting as "dark" as there was no confirmed signal yet for the North's return to the wider talks.

North Korea, which staged its first nuclear bomb test in 2006, quit the six-party talks in April and tested a second atomic weapon in May.

Its leader Kim Jong-Il said in October he was ready to return to the talks, but only if bilateral discussions with the United States are satisfactory.

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