Senior Vice Minister Toshimitsu Motegi met assistant secretary of state Kelly and was on Thursday due to meet US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, the State Department said.

The talks would focus on "major issues in US-Japan relations and other matters of mutual concern, including North Korea," the department said in a statement.

Russia's deputy foreign minister Alexander Losyukov, said Wednesday the talks on the nuclear crisis could take place as early as this month.

Participants are still discussing the details and timing of the talks expected to take place in Beijing including Russia, North Korea, the United States, South Korea and Japan and China.

The 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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