The State Department said Kelly, branded by Pyongyang last year as "arrogant" and "high-handed," would lead the team, as he wrapped up a two-day brainstorming session ahead of the crucial talks with envoys from US allies South Korea and Japan.

Kelly travelled to North Korea last October to confront the Stalinist state with what the United States said was evidence of a banned weapons program, igniting a nine-month nuclear crisis.

"Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs James Kelly will lead the US delegation," said Tom Casey, a State Department spokesman.

Kelly will head a US interagency group at the talks, also involving North Korea, China, Russia, South Korea and Japan, Casey said.

The veteran diplomat also headed the US side at inconclusive three-way talks on the crisis in Beijing in April.

He was also at the head of the table Wednesday and Thursday, welcoming counterparts from South Korea and Japan to the State Department to prepare the way for the next round of Beijing talks between August 27 and 29.

Kelly and members of the South Korean and Japanese delegations gathered for less than two hours at the State Department Thursday to settle logistics and technical matters, ahead of the Beijing talks, officials said.

They held 90 minutes of talks on Wednesday described by a State Department official as "very useful" in honing the joint position that all three nations want to see a verifiable end to Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions.

"We have been on the same page for a long time; we are all agreed what the goal is," he said.

No immediate response was available from the other delegations, led for Japan by Mitoji Yabunaka, director general of Asia and Oceania affairs at the foreign ministry, who was joined by South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-Hyuck.

China confirmed Thursday that it would host the six-nation talks also involving the United States, Japan, Russia and the two Koreas from August 27 to 29 in Beijing.

Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said he was optimistic of resolving the North Korean nuclear standoff, but warned the talks could fail if Pyongyang's security concerns were not addressed.

Pyongyang fired off a new demand on Wednesday for a non-aggression pact that Washington has refused to grant and ruled out an early inspection of its nuclear facilities.

Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov backed Pyongyang's demands for a non-aggression pact as "absolutely logical."

The United States has consistently rejected such an agreement, 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.

Powell said Wednesday that the United States had not put forward economic incentives for North Korea to end its nuclear program.

The New York Times cited unnamed administration officials as saying that Washington could be prepared to offer "economic incentives" to Pyongyang, if it came clean on its weapons program or welcomed inspectors.

The nuclear crisis erupted last October, when the United States accused Pyongyang of reneging on a 1994 bilateral nuclear freeze accord by setting up a clandestine 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 fuel rods at its nuclear plant at Yongbyon.

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