"Both sides agreed to continue to cooperate with each other in the future to narrow down the remaining differences," a foreign ministry spokesman said in a statement published by the North's official Korean Central News Agency.

The statement came as US envoy Stephen Bosworth left Seoul after a three-day visit to Pyongyang. He arrived in China late Friday, a US embassy spokesman in Beijing said, before talks in Tokyo on Saturday and Moscow on Sunday.

For Russia, the North Korean statement was "a step in the right direction", the Interfax news agency quoted a foreign ministry source in Moscow as saying.

Russia supports direct talks between the United States and North Korea and is "ready to contribute to them in any way possible", the ministry source said.

In Seoul on Thursday, Bosworth said the United States and North Korea agreed on the need to resume six-party talks designed to dismantle the Stalinist state's nuclear arms.

But he said it was unclear when the North would return to the forum, which groups the two Koreas, the United States, Japan, China and Russia.

Bosworth's visit was nonetheless described as "quite positive" by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who said the US approach was one of "strategic patience".

The North Korean spokesman said: "Through working and frank discussion, the two sides deepened the mutual understanding, narrowed their differences and found not a few common points.

"They also reached a series of common understandings of the need to resume the six-party talks and the importance of implementing" a September 2005 agreement, he said.

In that six-party agreement, North Korea vowed to scrap its nuclear weaponry in exchange for aid, diplomatic benefits and talks on a permanent peace pact for the peninsula.

The North said the talks with Bosworth also covered normalisation of relations, economic and energy assistance, and the proposed peace pact.

Analysts believe Pyongyang's main goal is to negotiate a peace treaty with the administration of President Barack Obama, who has pledged to reach out to US adversaries.

"Through its statement today, North Korea is sending a positive message to the outside world," Seoul's Dongguk University professor Kim Yong-Hyun said.

"While seeking to maintain momentum for dialogue, North Korea is emphasising its demand for a peace treaty with the United States," he said.

The peninsula is still technically at war as the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty. The United States fought on South Korea's side and still has 28,500 troops stationed in the South.

Bosworth, however, stressed his visit was exploratory and limited to the nuclear issue.

Clinton said in Washington: "For a preliminary meeting, it was quite positive.... The approach that our administration is taking is of strategic patience in close coordination with our six-party allies.

"And I think that making it clear to the North Koreans what we had expected and how we were moving forward is exactly what was called for."

In April, angry at international censure after it launched a long-range rocket, the North declared the six-party talks "dead". In May it staged its second nuclear test, following up with missile launches in July.

Its bellicose measures attracted tougher UN sanctions, and analysts say North Korea's new willingness for talks may be prompted by a desire to ease the sanctions.

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