The United States had warned that it would "rethink" its approach to North Korean nuclear disarmament after the latest round of six-country negotiations collapsed in Beijing on Thursday.

"Future fuel shipments will not go forward absent a verification regime," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said following what he called an "understanding" among the United States, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia.

He told reporters that the North Koreans also understood this.

The six parties struck a landmark deal in February 2007 that promised diplomatic and economic incentives -- including energy aid -- to North Korea in return for giving up the nuclear programs it spent decades developing.

The State Department said later that a Russian shipment of heavy fuel oil had arrived in North Korea and "will finish being off-loaded next week," even though Russia had been party to the so-called understanding.

McCormack said that for technical reasons the Russian shipment would be the last until the impasse is broken.

McCormack said the impasse had also put in limbo discussions to find an alternative supplier to Japan to ship fuel to North Korea as Tokyo insists that Pyongyang first clear up the cases of Japanese abducted during the Cold War.

Australia and the European Union had been contacted about filling the void, US officials say.

The failure of the talks in Beijing all but dashed the hopes of US President George W. Bush's administration to make progress on North Korean disarmament before Barack Obama moves into the White House.

The Bush administration had made solving the North Korean nuclear impasse a key foreign policy priority.

McCormack said that US negotiator Christopher Hill had returned from Beijing to give Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice "a more full briefing" about his discussions with the other parties.

Hill, the assistant secretary for East Asia and Pacific Affairs, will continue consultations with his counterparts from South Korea, Japan, Russia and China who have all returned to their capitals, he added.

McCormack did not rule out the risk that North Korea would resume steps it took months ago to restart its nuclear plants as it pressed demands to be taken off a US terrorism blacklist.

"Throughout (the negotiations) there have been stops and starts and various kinds of fits," McCormack said when asked about such a risk.

The negotiations that began in 2003 have been mired in countless setbacks, and did not prevent Pyongyang from testing its first atomic bomb in 2006.

And although the North made its declaration of its atomic activities in June, the next step in the process was working out a way to determine if it had been telling the truth.

In October, the United States struck North Korea from a blacklist of countries supporting terrorism after saying Pyongyang agreed to steps to verify its nuclear disarmament and pledged to resume disabling its atomic plants.

But the five other parties were unable in Beijing this week to get North Korea to commit all of those steps to paper.

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