The State Department's top Asia policymaker James Kelly was to welcome counterparts from Seoul and Tokyo in the latest stage of a global diplomatic dance leading to the talks expected to start in Beijing on August 27.

The three allied nations will be joined at the Beijing talks by China, Russia and North Korea itself, and hope to plot a way out of the crisis over Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programs which erupted last October.

Kelly, Mitoji Yabunaka, director General of Asia and Oceania affairs at Japan's Foreign Ministry and South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-Hyuck were due to hold two days of "informal" discussions, officials said.

But hours before they were due to meet, North Korea fired off a new demand for a non-agression pact that Washington has refused to grant and ruled out an early inspection of its nuclear facilities.

A North Korean foreign ministry spokesman said Pyongyang would demand in Beijing that Washington drop its "hostile" policy towards the Stalinist state and sign a pact "that would strictly and legally guarantee that neither of the two sides attacks the other".

The spokesman warned in a dispatch on the government mouthpiece Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) that Washington must change its attitude or face a nuclear North Korea.

Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov said Wednesday as North and South Korean officials were in Moscow that Pyongyang's demands for a non-agression pact were "absolutely logical."

The United States has consistently rejected a non-aggression pact. But Secretary of State Colin Powell last week suggested there may be a way for the US Congress to take note of a less formal arrangement, especially if it encompassed other regional powers.

There is no sign that the Bush administration is ready to modify its refusal to bow to "nuclear blackmail" from Pyongyang by offering large scale aid or financing in return for an end to the nuclear program.

President George W. Bush has refused to countenance one-on-one talks with the Stalinist state, and insisted on the multilateral format to be adopted in Beijing.

The nuclear crisis erupted in October when Kelly used talks in Pyongyang to accuse North Korea 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 Agency monitors and withdrew from the treaty. Pyongyang has since claimed to have reprocessed 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods at its nuclear plant at Yongbyon.

Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing arrived in Seoul meanwhile Wednesday to meet his South Korean counterpart Yoon Young-Kwan about the upcoming meeting.

Amid the flurry of diplomacy, Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister, Alexander Losyukov, has this week been in Beijing, while North and South Korean officials were in Moscow. Chinese envoys have also recently travelled to Pyongyang and Tokyo.

WAR.WIRE