<B>SOUTH KOREA</B> aims to hold the first working group meeting on the crisis over North Korea?s nuclear programmes in March, Yonhap news agency quoted a senior government official as saying yesterday.

The official said Seoul would promptly begin preparations to follow up on an agreement to establish working groups, the most significant result of the latest round of six-party nuclear talks that ended on Saturday in Beijing without a breakthrough.

But North Korea, in a hostile first reaction to the four-day talks, said the United States had ignored its overtures and was trying to isolate the North, making it ?difficult to expect that any further talks would help find a solution to the issue?.

?The US seems to calculate that the DPRK will collapse of its own accord if it wastes time, putting pressure upon the DPRK undergoing economic difficulties?, said a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman in a statement published by the KCNA news agency.

<B>A new round at mid-year</B>

?This is little short of a behaviour of a bat-blind person who knows nothing of the DPRK.? DPRK stands for the Democratic People?s Republic of Korea, North Korea?s official name.

After meetings marked by what host China said was strong mistrust between the United States and North Korea, the six parties also agreed to hold a new round by mid-year. Japan, Russia and South Korea round out the six. ?The working group talks will be able to take place as early as mid-March or by no later than the end of March? , the South Korean official told Yonhap. He said two or three lower-level meetings would probably precede a third round of six-way talks. Details about who would be included in the working group were not released.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher acknowledged that ?key differences remain?. He cited as progress the agreements to establish groups that would meet in between the rounds and make the talks more regular.

After the first inconclusive round in August, it took six months of intense shuttle diplomacy to organise new six-country talks, something the United States wanted to avoid repeating.

Analysts said regular meetings of experts could allow for detailed and more private discussions of the complicated dispute.

?Doing that kind of work in the context of high-level, almost public negotiations is highly unrealistic?, said Peter Hayes, director of the Nautilus Institute in Berkeley. The risk and downside in all this is that it will gain some time, but North Korea probably will gain same nuclear weapons capacity along the way.?

Other analysts said there was also a risk that both the United States and North Korea would dig in their heels with the approach of the November US presidential election.

In Beijing, China?s official People?s Daily said mistrust between North Korea and the United States prevented any breakthrough in the talks, making further contacts crucial to brokering a solution. ?Only with more direct contacts can both sides gradually establish mutual trust and fuel hopes of finding a peaceful solution regarding the nuclear issue.?

<B>Further discussions needed</B>

The daily echoed a statement by the talks chairman, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi, that further discussions were needed on the North?s proposal to freeze its nuclear programmes and on the US demand for dismantling all atomic arms schemes. North Korea repeated in Beijing its denial that it had a clandestine enriched uranium weapons programme in addition to the plutonium-based bomb-making scheme that it is offering to freeze in exchange for energy aid and diplomatic concessions.

The crux of the dispute and the reason for the six-party talks is a US accusation ? which North Korea denies ? that North Korea is pursuing a uranium enriching programme for bombs. A senior US official said in Beijing North Korea?s denials had isolated it. The official said all but Pyongyang had signed on the US goal of the ?complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling?. of the North?s nuclear programmes.