"Talks could start even in August," said Alexander Losyukov, deputy foreign minister of Russia which is due to participate in the talks along with North Korea, South Korea, the United States, Japan and China.

The participants are still discussing the details and timing of the talks. Previously, US and South Korean officials have said the talks could take place either in August or September.

But before the six-way talks can go ahead, "there needs to be a series of two-way contacts," Losyukov told reporters in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, where he was accompanying Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"There is no point in holding talks at the highest levels right now, no one is ready for them," he said, as quoted by the RIA Novosti news agency.

The latest North Korean 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.

North Korea then kicked out International Atomic Energy Agencymonitors and withdrew from the treaty.

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

Washington 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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