SEOUL - EFFORTS to persuade North Korea to scrap its nuclear programmes should continue despite the overnight failure of the latest round of talks, South Korea said on Friday.

'It is too early to say the process to denuclearise the North has come to naught,' Foreign Minister Yu Myung Hwan told a seminar.

'The (six-party) participants agree the nuclear issue must be settled through diplomacy and in a peaceful manner.'

Delegates to the six-party forum failed on Thursday to achieve a deal on ways to inspect the North's nuclear facilities, and set no date for their next meeting.

The impasse dashed hopes that President George W. Bush's administration can make progress on a key foreign policy issue during its final weeks.

'Even if the talks did not proceed at a pace that we had hoped for, participants in the six-party talks share the view that considerable progress has been made, considering the declaration of nuclear facilities and the disablement of the facility in Yongbyon,' Mr Yu said.

The forum, which groups the two Koreas, the United States, China, Russia and Japan, began meeting in 2003 but has frequently come close to breakdown. It failed to prevent an atomic weapons test by the North in 2006.

As part of a 2007 aid-for-disarmament pact, the North has disabled much of its plutonium-producing complex at Yongbyon and has made a declaration of its nuclear activities.

But negotiators cannot agree on how that declaration should be verified, with the North refusing to accept the collecting of soil and other samples. -- AFP