The report came as the US embassy said a State Department official had been stationed in the North Korean capital to assist the US-supervised drive to disable the plants by year-end.

Under the current phase of a six-nation pact, North Korea agreed to disable its plants and declare a full list of nuclear programmes by the end of this year in return for major energy aid.

Work started at the main complex at Yongbyon in early November, some 13 months after Pyongyang shocked the world with its first nuclear test.

US, South Korean, Japanese, Russian and Chinese experts will visit Yongbyon from November 27-29, the South Korean foreign ministry said.

Seoul is sending deputy nuclear negotiator Lim Sung-Nam and one expert, said spokesman Cho Hee-Yong. They left Monday morning for Beijing to join the multinational team and will be the first South Koreans to visit Yongbyon.

Chosun Sinbo, a newspaper for ethnic Koreans in Japan which often reflects the North Korean government's view, said Monday the communist state would make full disclosure if the other parties also lived up to their obligations.

"Analysts who worry about a cover-up in the declaration are obsessed with out-of-date ways of thinking. They say North Korea is actually reluctant to get denuclearised.

"This is an assertion far from fact," said the paper.

In other signs of efforts to meet the year-end deadline, a diplomatic source in Seoul told AFP that US nuclear envoy Christopher Hill would likely visit Japan, South Korea and China this week.

Some media reports have said the next round of six-party talks will be on December 6-8 after negotiators get a report from this week's inspection visit.

Relations between the US and the North, once branded by President George W. Bush as part of an "axis of evil," have been improving since Pyongyang committed to scrapping its atomic programmes.

"One US State Department official is currently staying at the Koryo Hotel with a telephone and a fax machine," embassy spokesman Max Kwak told AFP. He said the official was helping with logistics for the equipment needed to conduct disablement work.

"The official will return after the duty is fulfilled," said Kwak, adding this was not a prelude to normalising relations.

South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper said the diplomat had been in Pyongyang since mid-November.

Quoting a source in Washington, it said the White House would soon send another senior diplomat to handle political affairs who would permanently reside in North Korea for the first time.

The Koryo Hotel was expected to become "a de facto US liaison office," Chosun said.

Kwak said he had no information on any follow-up measures.

If the North goes on next year to irreversibly dismantle all its atomic plants and weapons, Washington envisages lifting sanctions and establishing diplomatic relations as part of the six-nation accord reached in February.

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