'We will neither treat Japan as a party to the talks nor deal with it even if it impudently appears in the conference room, lost to shame,' a foreign ministry spokesman was quoted by the official Korean Central News Agency as saying.

The negotiations are scheduled to resume Monday in Beijing although China has not officially announced the date. The North's statement said only that the talks would resume 'soon.'

North Korea has frequently called for the exclusion of Japan from the forum, which began meeting in August 2003. It was unclear what effect the latest announcement would have on negotiations.

Japan says it will not provide aid until the communist state accounts fully for Japanese nationals believed kidnapped by Pyongyang during the Cold War era.

North Korea's leader Kim Jong-Il has admitted his regime kidnapped Japanese to train its spies and in 2002 allowed five of them to return. It says the other abductees are dead but Japan believes they are alive and are barred from leaving because they know too many secrets.

Under a 2007 six-party pact, the North agreed to disable the facilities at its plutonium-producing Yongbyon nuclear complex and deliver a declaration of its nuclear activities.

In return it was to get one million tons of fuel oil or energy aid of equivalent value. About half has so far been delivered. The United States has removed the North from a terrorism blacklist as promised under the pact.

The North said the main task of the six-party talks would be to speed up the aid delivery 'and achieve common understanding of the issue of verification' of the nuclear declaration.

It complained that Japan 'persistently and impertinently insists on its participation in the talks though it is refusing to fulfil its commitment.'

Tokyo's aim is to block denuclearisation to give it a pretext to boost its military power, the statement said.

'Such country has neither justification nor qualification to participate in the talks,' it said, noting that other countries are wiling to provide Japan's share of the aid.

Australia, New Zealand and European Union member states have been approached to contribute, according to South Korea's foreign ministry.

The US and North Korean nuclear negotiators, Christopher Hill and Kim Kye-Gwan, held two days of preparatory talks in Singapore this week ahead of the expected negotiations in Beijing.

The disarmament pact almost broke down in September because of disagreement over how the North's nuclear declaration should be independently verified.

Mr Hill visited Pyongyang from Oct 1-3 to try to save the deal but the two sides differ on what was agreed at that time.

North Korea, which tested a nuclear weapon in October 2006, insists it never agreed to samples of atomic material being taken away for examination.

The US says it did consent to the procedure, seen as crucial to assessing how much bomb-making plutonium the North has produced.

Mr Hill and Mr Kim failed to reach an agreement in Singapore but indicated there would be more talks in Beijing on the issue.

'I am sure the negotiations will be as usual: they will be difficult,' Mr Hill said on Friday. He was to arrive in Seoul later on Saturday for consultations before flying on to Beijing. -- AFP