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The United States hopes to resume talks with North Korea on normalization of ties somewhere in Southeast Asia by the end of August, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said Thursday.

Hill, Washington's chief negotiator in the normalization talks, said he and his North Korean counterpart Kim Kye-gwan have already discussed resuming the talks.

"But we need to find a mutually acceptable place," Hill told reporters, adding the talks will likely be held "in the last week" of August.

Hill and Kim, also chief negotiators in six-nation talks over North Korea's nuclear program, last held normalization talks in New York in March. The two last met in June during the U.S.

nuclear envoy's two-day trip to Pyongyang, the first of its kind since the nuclear disarmament talks began 2003.

The bilateral talks are to follow a series of working group meetings that are set to discuss ways to sequence benefits for the communist North with its denuclearization steps, which should include disabling its key nuclear facilities and a complete declaration of all its nuclear programs.

Under a six-nation accord signed Feb. 13, the North has shut down its plutonium-producing facilities at Yongbyon in exchange for 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil. An additional 950,000 tons of heavy oil will be provided to the North once it completes the second phase of disabling the Yongbyon facilities and submitting a full list of its nuclear programs.

South Korea, the chair of a working group on energy assistance, has proposed to host a new round of meetings next week at the truce village of Panmunjeom, just south of the heavily-fortified inter-Korean border.

China, according to the chief U.S. nuclear envoy, has proposed to hold the separate working group on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula beginning next Friday, but Hill said he wanted it to start on Aug. 13.

The Russians, heading the six-party working group on establishing a new peace mechanism for Northeast Asia, have said a new round will be held in the second week of this month. "I want to say (August) 24, but I am not sure," Hill said.

Under a joint statement issued at the latest round of the six-nation talks in Beijing last month, Japan also has to hold a new round of bilateral talks with the North on normalization of bilateral ties before a new round of the nuclear disarmament talks slated for September.

"It's a very ambitious timetable...but I think (if) we are not ambitious, we won't get it done," Hill told reporters, adding the countries are also looking to hold a meeting of their foreign ministers "very soon after the next round" of the six-party talks.

The U.S. envoy has repeatedly expressed hopes to complete by the end of this year implementing the Feb. 13 agreement, which would effectively prevent North Korea from producing additional fissile material at least for the next few years.

Critics, however, say there are many obstacles to come as North Korea and the other countries have yet to agree on a number of issues, including what disablement means and how the North would disable its nuclear programs and in return for what.

The nuclear dispute erupted in late 2002 when the U.S. accused North Korea of running a clandestine nuclear weapons program based on highly-enriched uranium in addition to its well-known plutonium-based program, an accusation denied by the North.

At the end of the latest round of the six-party talks in Beijing in July, the North's chief nuclear envoy, Kim, demanded provision of light-water nuclear reactors before the North's disablement of its nuclear facilities, a major potential problem.

Under the September 2005 agreement, the parties concerned are supposed to discuss the provision of the reactors at an appropriate MANILA, Aug. 2 (Yonhap News)