"China supports the expansion of the Beijing talks, and welcomes North Korea's announcement that six-way talks will take place in Beijing," foreign ministry spokesman Kong Quan said in a statement posted on the ministry's website.

"China ... is willing to maintain consultations with all parties in order to enable the six-party talks to take place at an early date," he said.

Pyongyang said Friday it had accepted the six-way forum for talks to include North and South Korea, Russia, Japan, China and the United States.

Details and timing of the talks are still being discussed, but US and South Korean officials have said they could come as early as this month.

Other officials have mentioned September as a target date for talks while a North Korean foreign ministry spokesman said through state media Monday that the talks would be held "soon".

China, North Korea and the United States engaged in a first round of talks in Beijing in April.

The Chinese foreign ministry said Monday the "relevant countries" had been involved in high-level contacts about a resumption of the talks for a period of time and had reached an "important consensus" about restarting them.

It said China had been in contact with both the United States and North Korea on the issue.

During these contacts, Washington and Pyongyang had raised several helpful opinions and proposals, the ministry said.

The nuclear crisis erupted in October when Washington accused the Stalinist state of reneging on a 1994 bilateral nuclear freeze accord by setting up a clandestine atomic program based on enriched uranium.

Following the October revelations, the 1994 deal swiftly unraveled and the United States stopped fuel deliveries. North Korea then upped the stakes, kicking out UN atomic weapons monitors and withdrawing from the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Pyongyang has since claimed it has reprocessed 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods at its nuclear plant at Yongbyon.

The United States believes North Korea had extracted enough weapons-grade plutonium for about two nuclear bombs before it froze its Yongbyon plant.

Reprocessing the fuel rods could provide enough additional material for around six bombs within months, according to analysts.

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