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North Korea said Thursday its latest nuclear talks with the United States in Pyongyang produced progress, hinting that it will provide a long-awaited declaration of its atomic weapons program in the near future.

The North's positive tone came hours after a U.S. delegation of diplomats and nuclear experts ended its three-day trip aimed at finalizing the terms of Pyongyang's long-delayed declaration of its nuclear holdings.

North Korea missed a Dec. 31 deadline to fully account for its nuclear activities under an aid-for-denuclearization deal, stalling the negotiations. Instead of moving forward to the next step, the North's Soviet-era plutonium-producing facilities, located north of the nation's capital, have been in the continuous process of disablement.

However, signs of a breakthrough emerged since the top North Korean and U.S. nuclear envoys met in Singapore early this month.

The outcome of the U.S. group's visit was seen by many as a bellwether for the resumption of the six-way talks on the nuclear crisis.

"Technical matters for winding up the implementation of the October 3 agreement, including the contents of the nuclear declaration, were discussed there," an unidentified North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman told the country's official news agency after the visit by the U.S. team led by Sung Kim, head of the State Department's Office of Korea Affairs.

"The negotiations proceeded in a sincere and constructive manner, and progress was made there," the spokesman added without providing other details.

The U.S. delegates crossed the heavily armed inter-Korean border by land and returned to Seoul earlier in the day, according to officials here. The outcome of the trip was not made public immediately, however, and the U.S. embassy here was not available for comment.

South Korean officials said they were expecting to meet Kim for a debriefing.

The team is scheduled to fly back to Washington on Friday. "No schedule has been set yet, however," a senior Foreign Ministry official said.

In Washington, the Central Intelligence Agency was set to brief legislators next week on allegations that North Korea helped Syria build a nuclear reactor. Last September, Israel destroyed a site in Syria suspected to have housed such a nuclear facility.

The U.S. has called on North Korea to come clean on suspicions over proliferation and its alleged uranium-enrichment program.

South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan has described the U.S. delegation's trip to Pyongyang as a final push for the resumption of the six-way talks which also involve China, Russia, and Japan.

He said if the visit bears fruit, the talks are expected to restart before the end of May after several months of hiatus.

SEOUL, April 24 (Yonhap)