The comments by Lynn Pascoe came as a report said North Korea's chief nuclear negotiator was planning a rare visit to the United States next month.

Pascoe told reporters in Beijing that he had held "frank" discussions with officials in Pyongyang on issues that included the stalled six-party talks and UN sanctions imposed on the North for a nuclear test it conducted last year.

"They certainly are not happy with the sanctions and they certainly were not eager -- not ruling out, but not eager -- to return to the six-party talks," said Pascoe, who was sent by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Pascoe, the first high-level UN official to visit the isolated state since 2004, declined to discuss specifics of his talks in North Korea.

However, while calling his meetings "useful", he disputed an earlier report by China's official Xinhua news agency that quoted him saying he was "very satisfied" with the discussions.

"I was certainly satisfied with the arrangements... not the content of all of the discussions," said Pascoe, who met Kim Yong-Nam, the official number two leader, and other officials.

China, Pyongyang's close ally and host of the six-nation nuclear disarmament negotiations, has been trying during separate talks in Beijing this week to persuade the North to return to the six-party forum.

It quit last April, a month before staging a second atomic weapons test. It has said the resulting UN sanctions must be lifted before it rejoins the nuclear dialogue.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency said the North's chief negotiator Kim Kye-Gwan would visit the United States in March, following a trip to Pyongyang in December by US envoy Stephen Bosworth.

"I believe the schedule for Kim's visit has already been fixed," Yonhap quoted a diplomatic source as saying in a report from Beijing, where Kim has been holding talks with his Chinese counterparts. No date was mentioned.

The North also wants US agreement to hold talks about a formal peace treaty before it comes back to the forum also grouping South Korea, Japan and Russia.

"We exchanged important opinions with China on the matters of the peace treaty on the Korean peninsula and the resumption of the six-party talks," Kim told reporters Thursday.

Chang Yong-Seok, research director at Seoul's Institute for Peace Affairs, said he was unsure at present whether the reported visit would go ahead and he did not expect any immediate results from this week's Beijing talks.

US State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley, speaking before reports of Kim's trip, said Washington did not rule out further two-way meetings with Pyongyang.

But the US believes "firmly" that the next contact with North Korea should be through a formal six-party meeting, he said.

China is North Korea's only major ally, its main trade partner and its chief supplier of desperately needed food and oil. The two sides have been discussing possible economic assistance as well as nuclear matters, Yonhap reported.

South Korean officials estimate the North will run short of 1.29 million tons of grain this year, equivalent to almost four months' supply.

Pascoe, UN undersecretary-general for political affairs, said his delegation visited some UN humanitarian projects in North Korea and he warned falling donations were hurting programmes.

He said initiatives were about "one-quarter of what they should be" and were shrinking due to "donor fatigue."

"That for us is a real concern," he said.

However, he offered no specific information on the food situation in China or a recent drastic currency revaluation.

The currency move was seen by North Korean experts as a way to rein in a nascent free-market economy but analysts said it backfired disastrously, intensifying food shortages and fuelling inflation and public anger.

Pascoe also passed on a message from secretary-general Ban to top leader Kim Jong-Il. He declined to discuss specifics of the letter.

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