The chief US negotiator on North Korea, Christopher Hill, said Pyongyang had given no sign it would agree to attend six-nation discussions on the sidelines of a regional security forum in Malaysia.

However, frantic diplomatic efforts led by China and South Korea were under way here to bring all six countries together and restart the talks that the North left in November in protest over US sanctions.

"As North Korea's neighbour, China is seriously concerned about the emergence of new, complex elements in the peace and stability of the Korean peninsula situation," said Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing.

"This is caused by many reasons. Among them, there has been long-term enmity between some major parties and it has led to serious mistrust," he said in comments relayed to the media by foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu.

However Li later said there was still hope reclusive North Korea would rejoin the talks.

"We are hoping, we are keeping our fingers crossed, that with good conditions, we can have the six-party talks resume," he told reporters after meeting Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) foreign ministers and his counterparts from Japan and South Korea.

Hill held out gloomier prospects, saying that he would "hate to use optimism and North Korea in the same sentence."

"As yet we do not have any signals from the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) that they intend to participate in any six-party discussions here in Kuala Lumpur," he said after talks with Chinese deputy foreign minister Wu Dawei.

Dawei said Tuesday that a session of the six-way discussions grouping the two Koreas, China, Japan, the United States and Russia, had been provisionally scheduled for Friday.

North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam-Sun and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are due to arrive in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday for the 26-nation ASEAN Regional Forum security meeting the following day.

The latest negotiations have showed up differences over what to do if North Korea shuns the talks, with Hill saying they should go ahead with the remaining five and China and South Korea insisting they should not.

Chinese diplomats said the six-way format could collapse if the talks proceed without Pyongyang. One South Korean official suggested there could be a multilateral meeting which also groups Malaysia, Australia and Canada.

China is seen as the biggest influence on North Korea, although the hermit state snubbed Beijing's appeals earlier this month and launched a volley of ballistic missile tests that inflamed tensions in the region.

Li is due to meet his North Korean counterpart on Friday, Wu Dawei indicated. South Korea is also pushing for bilateral talks with its neighbour, diplomats said.

Japan's negiotator on the talks meanwhile called for all six parties to use the opportunity to meet. Tokyo led efforts to have UN sanctions imposed on North Korea after the missile tests.

Reclusive North Korea raised the stakes ahead of Friday's forum when it described Rice as a "political imbecile" for criticising the July 5 missile launches.

"This is an example of the totally unacceptable and unprofessional types of comments we see from DPRK state-run media," Hill retorted Wednesday, adding that it made it more difficult for the world to take North Korea seriously.

Separately Syed Hamid Albar, the foreign minister of current ASEAN chair Malaysia, repeated an offer to host the talks and said the six countries should "take the opportunity to have a meeting among themselves."

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