SEOUL, Jan 2: A US delegation will visit North Korea next week to tour the nuclear complex at Yongbyon, which Washington believes may be a key part of Pyongyang's suspected nuclear weapons programme, a South Korean official said on Friday.

The USA Today newspaper said the Jan 6-10 visit had been approved by the Bush administration and a top nuclear scientist would be in the delegation. It would mark the first time outsiders have been allowed in the communist country's nuclear complex since UN inspectors were expelled a year ago in the midst of Pyongyang's confrontation with Washington over its nuclear ambitions.

A South Korean foreign ministry official, confirming the USA Today report, said Seoul was not a party to the visit and he was unsure what the delegation would do in Yongbyon or what specific facilities it would look at.

"I would not want to put too much meaning to the visit," he said. "It is difficult to use the visit as a gauge of the next round of six-party talks."The Bush administration also is not involved in plans for the North Korea visit, according to a US official, who said the group would include congressional staffers and a former top scientist at a US nuclear lab.

It was unclear, however, just what the group's composition was or what it would do in North Korea if the visit occurs. Two staff members of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee plan to leave on Saturday for North Korea and may visit the Yongbyon nuclear facility, a spokesman for the committee said on Friday.

The US official said Washington did not believe that the visit by the Senate staffers and by others would interfere with efforts to set up a fresh round of six-party talks on how to end Pyongyang's suspected atomic weapons programmes.

"In our view, this does not impinge on or compete with our focus, which is on convening a new round of six-party talks and on achieving the goal of a denuclearized (Korean peninsula)," the US official said.

USA Today reported that the US delegation would include Sig Hecker, director from 1985 to 1997 of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which produced the first US nuclear bomb and still constructs weapons.

Mr Hecker had been told he can visit Yongbyon, where the North Koreans may have reprocessed used fuel to make plutonium for six bombs, the paper cited members of the delegation as saying.

By inviting Sig Hecker to Yongbyon, the government of Kim Jong Il may want to prove it has nuclear weapons as a way of bolstering a tough negotiating stance, the newspaper said.

It may also want to try to defuse tension by showing that its nuclear sites will be open to inspection if a deal is reached, the report added. North Korea acknowledged a secret programme to enrich uranium for bombs in 2002, according to US officials, who said this broke a 1994 deal that froze the North's nuclear programme.

The North then expelled International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, leading other nations to question whether it has resumed bomb-making efforts at Yongbyon. -Reuters