The meeting would have been the first since South Korea, the United States and other nations accused the North of torpedoing the corvette and killing 46 sailors.

Pyongyang vehemently denies the charge, which sent regional tensions rising sharply, and threatens war in response to any punishment.

North Korea's representation sent a message to the Military Armistice Commission of the UNC later Tuesday, proposing a meeting between the two sides Thursday morning, Yonhap news agency reported.

A South Korean military official said the possibility of holding the colonel-level meeting Thursday is very high, although the UNC has yet to reply to the North, Yonhap said.

The announcement of the delay came less than an hour before the talks were to begin Tuesday at the border village of Panmunjom.

The Command said in a statement the North's army representatives requested a delay "for administrative reasons".

In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters that North Korean officials still wanted to hold the meeting, and "they've indicated that they'd like to move it to Thursday.

"This could take place on Thursday but it's hard to tell," he said. "North Korea is an unpredictable regime and so I wouldn't put any money on that."

The North previously refused to hold discussions with the US military over the sinking, calling for talks only with South Korea, but it shifted its stance on Friday.

Hours after that development, the UN Security Council issued a statement which condemned the attack but did not apportion blame -- a result hailed by the North as a "great diplomatic victory".

Following the UN statement, which was watered down under pressure from Pyongyang's ally China, the North reiterated its conditional willingness to return to stalled international nuclear disarmament negotiations.

But it threatened "strong physical retaliation" if South Korea and the United States persist in "demonstration of forces and sanctions".

The two allies plan a naval exercise as a show of strength following the attack on the 1,200-tonne corvette.

But they are still deciding where to hold the drill, originally planned for the Yellow Sea, following strong protests from China.

The North's ruling party daily Rodong Sinmun termed the planned exercises "dangerous military provocations" designed to bring the situation to the brink of war.

Defence ministry spokesman Won Tae-Jae hinted that parts of the drill could be moved from the Yellow Sea to the Sea of Japan (East Sea).

"I think we need flexibility (about the drill's location)," Won told journalists, as the nuclear-powered USS George Washington aircraft carrier was reportedly heading to the Sea of Japan instead of the Yellow Sea.

Professor Kim Yong-Hyun of Seoul's Dongguk University said he believes the North postponed Tuesday's talks because it planned to use the meeting to denounce the exercise -- details of which are still unsettled.

"The military talks will take place sooner or later as China is heaping pressure on the North to have dialogue," Kim told AFP.

The US State Department voiced scepticism Monday about the North's willingness to return to six-party disarmament talks, urging it to cease "provocative behaviour" and fulfil commitments to give up its nuclear programme.

The talks involving China, Japan, the two Koreas, Russia and the United States agreed in 2005 and 2007 to offer badly needed aid and security guarantees for Pyongyang in return for nuclear disarmament.

The North stormed out of the talks in April last year after being censured by the UN for a long-range missile launch. It staged a second nuclear weapons test a month later.

Pyongyang has previously expressed a willingness in principle to return. But first it wants the US to agree to hold talks on a peace treaty formally ending the 1950-53 war, and an end to sanctions.

burs-dwa/bsk/dk

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