North Korea said Wednesday that the United States had offered food aid and a suspension of sanctions if it halted its uranium enrichment programme.

The comments by a foreign ministry spokesman to Pyongyang's official news agency were the first by the North on the issue.

Before the sudden death of the North's leader Kim Jong-Il on December 17, there were several media reports that such an agreement was imminent.

At talks in July last year, Washington "proposed to take confidence-building steps such as suspension of sanctions, as well as food aid" in return for a "temporary suspension" of uranium enrichment, the North's spokesman said.

Experts say the uranium programme disclosed in November 2010 could give the communist state a second way to make nuclear weapons. The disclosure spurred efforts to revive stalled six-party nuclear disarmament negotiations.

The US and North Korea last year held two rounds of bilateral talks aimed at restarting the negotiations last held in December 2008.

A third round was reportedly scheduled in Beijing before the announcement of Kim's death put the process on hold.

The spokesman's statement suggested that a deal was still on the cards if the US raised the amount of food it is willing to offer.

"We will watch if the US truly wants to build confidence," it said.

Washington says any decision to offer humanitarian food aid would not be linked to other issues, but the spokesman accused the United States of politicising the issue.

Robert King, US special envoy for North Korean human rights, met senior North Korean foreign ministry official Ri Gun in Beijing on December 15-16 to discuss a possible resumption of US food aid.

South Korean media reports at the time said the North had agreed to suspend its uranium programme while the US would provide up to 240,000 tonnes of food.

The United States pledged 500,000 tonnes of rice in 2008. Shipments stopped the following year amid questions over transparency of the distribution, and Pyongyang told the Americans to leave.

The North's spokesman said Wednesday the US had failed to provide 330,000 tonnes of the amount promised three years ago.

In recent talks it "has drastically changed the amount and items of provision contrary to the originally promised food aid", the spokesman said, adding this raised doubts about Washington's willingness to build confidence.

The US is offering high-energy biscuits and similar nutritional supplements in its latest package, rather than rice which could be diverted to the military or the elite.

UN agencies who visited in February 2011 said six million North Koreans -- a quarter of the population -- need urgent aid in a nation where hundreds of thousands died in a famine in the 1990s.

On Wednesday the United States said it plans to host high-level talks this month with Japan and South Korea on regional issues, including the situation in North Korea following Kim Jong-Il's death.

US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said that Kurt Campbell, the assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific Affairs, would host the talks with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts.

But Nuland said she could not yet announce a date.

The three will "talk about all the regional issues, but included very much within that our approach to the DPRK," or North Korea, she said.