North Korea has stayed silent on whether it will respond to the flurry of diplomacy and join its dialogue partners on the sidelines of a regional security conference, which the issue is expected to dominate.

But in a sign of the growing optimism, Chinese deputy foreign minister Wu Dawei said late Monday that a session of the six-way talks had been provisionally scheduled for Friday in Kuala Lumpur.

"The time currently being planned is the afternoon of the 28th, but it is still under negotiation," he said. "At the moment, all sides are still making efforts but whether it will happen or not, nobody can tell yet."

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 the region.

"We have agreed that we will encourage together the resumption of six-party talks," Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said Tuesday after a meeting with his South Korean counterpart Ban Ki-Moon.

"We both feel that we should treasure the consensus reached at the six-party talks. That is, the nuclearisation of the Korean peninsula and its peace and stability. That is the aim of our joint efforts."

The alliance of China and South Korea represents a new strategy in attempts to get communist North Korea to the talks, which was derailed in November after Pyongyang objected to a US-ordered freeze on its bank accounts.

"Even if North Korea launched missiles to create tensions and difficult situations, South Korea and China have closely cooperated to maintain the situation properly," Ban told Li at the meeting.

North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam-Sun is scheduled to arrive in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday for the 26-nation ASEAN Regional Forum security meeting the following day.

Both China and South Korea rejected the possibility of going ahead with a five-way discussion without North Korea. The nuclear talks group the two Koreas, China, Japan, the United States and Russia.

"We think six-party talks are more important," Li told reporters ahead of a meeting between Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) foreign ministers and their counterparts from China, Japan and South Korea.

South Korea's Ban added that he was "not optimistic" about five-way ministerial talks.

"I understand the Chinese government has reluctance to do so because it could be seen isolating and presurring North Korea. We respect the Chinese government's position," he said.

Ban also held open the prospect of talks involving chief negotiators instead of ministers, involving up to seven or eight "interested" countries.

Top US envoy on North Korea Christopher Hill said however that the five countries should get "together to talk about the way ahead" if North Korea refused to take part here.

"We don't want to have North Korea determining whether the rest of us meet and talk about this," he told reporters after arriving in Kuala Lumpur late Tuesday.

But he added that a meeting between the US and North Korea here was unlikely if it remained unwilling to restart six-nation talks.

North Korea raised the stakes ahead of Friday's ASEAN Regional Forum, describing US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is due to attend, as a "political imbecile" for criticising the tests.

Officials said there was also likely to be a two-way meeting between China and North Korea on Friday while South Korea is also pushing for bilateral talks with its neighbour.

The talks would help to reduce tensions caused by North Korea's defiant July 5 test firing of seven missiles. The incident provoked a Tokyo-sponsored United Nations condemnation and sanctions.

ASEAN has offered to host the talks if they go ahead and on Wednesday it again urged North Korea to join.

Syed Hamid Albar, the foreign minister of current ASEAN chair Malaysia, said the six countries should "take the opportunity to have a meeting among themselves."

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