The statement by Kim Yong Il, North Korea's deputy foreign minister, appeared to sharply contradict the spirit of the six-party talks organized by China, North Korea's closest ally and leading aid donor, and may buttress the contention of hard-liners in the Bush administration that the reclusive Communist government has no intention of reaching a verifiable agreement to dismantle its nuclear program.

Even so, China prodded the United States, North Korea, South Korea, Russia and Japan, the participants in the talks that concluded here this afternoon, to agree to another round within two months, China's state media said.

Though there was no firm date set for future talks, the parties involved had said that they would consider an agreement to continue a dialogue a significant step, given the often volatile relations between North Korea and the United States.

Asian diplomats described Thursday's meeting in less negative terms than did American officials, who revealed some details of the Beijing meetings to reporters in Washington on Thursday. These diplomats said the meeting was all along intended as a forum for parties to present negotiating positions, not to fully resolve differences.

North Korea has often made bellicose statements at negotiating sessions. In April, in its last meeting with the United States, a North Korean diplomat told James A. Kelly, then and now the head of the American negotiating team, that it had nuclear weapons and was moving quickly to develop more by extracting plutonium from spent nuclear
fuel rods.

Administration officials cautioned that they had not yet seen a word-by-word translation of what the North Koreans said on Thursday, so they could not assess how much it went beyond the threats the North has issued in the past.

"Maybe they are bluffing, but if so, it raises the bluff to a new level," a senior official in Washington said.

The officials also said the statement by North Korea was perplexing because it is risky to publicize a nuclear test in advance, given the real chance that the test might fail.

In public, the White House insisted that it was unfazed by the North's action, calling it yet another effort by to increase pressure on President Bush through bluster and threats.

"North Korea has a long history of making inflammatory comments that serve to isolate it from the rest of the world," said Claire Buchan, a White House spokeswoman, speaking in Crawford, Tex. She said Mr. Bush had not backed away from his commitment that the United States would never tolerate a nuclear North.

Administration officials have not said how they would react to a nuclear test, which would show that North Korea has the ability to turn its nuclear technology into working weapons - a step one intelligence analyst said recently was "something the North Koreans themselves probably aren't sure they can do."

But if North Korea follows through on its threat and conducts a nuclear explosion, that would almost certainly produce a serious escalation of the crisis and result in a breakdown of the current diplomatic overture.

A nuclear test could prompt the United States to seek a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning North Korea, opening the door to sanctions. North Korean officials have said they would consider sanctions an act of war.

Mr. Kim's comments came on the second day of discussions here at Diaoyutai state guest house, where representatives of the six nations were asked by China to respond to proposals put forward by other parties on Wednesday.

Mr. Kim, apparently responding to Mr. Kelly's rejection of the North's proposal to sign a
nonaggression pact before it admits nuclear inspectors and scraps its nuclear program, accused the United States of refusing to abandon its hostile policy toward his country.

Mr. Kim then said that the North intended to declare formally that it has nuclear weapons, and the ability to deliver them, and that it plans to test them, according to officials in Washington who were briefed on the talks by Mr. Kelly.

When negotiators from Russia and Japan sought to look for common ground between American and North Korean positions, Mr. Kim accused diplomats from those two countries of lying on instructions from the United States, according to Bush administration officials.

Some Bush administration officials have been saying for months that North Korea appears set on becoming a nuclear power and that a tight regime of sanctions and multilateral pressure, or even military action, may be necessary to prevent that from happening. But American officials had also supported the current talks because they view the discussions as a chance to put collective pressure on the North.

China, South Korea and Russia worked throughout the talks to balance American demands for a complete and verifiable end to North Korea's nuclear program with the North's call for a nonaggression treaty with Washington and for economic aid for its strapped economy.

A Chinese foreign policy expert informed about China's strategy at the talks said Beijing proposed a four-point declaration stating that all sides agree that the Korean peninsula should remain nuclear free, that the issue must be resolved peacefully, that North Korea's security concerns must be addressed, and that talks should
be continued in the near future, he said.

The final statement appeared to fall short of that goal, with the various sides saying that they had a frank exchange of views and would continue to discuss the problem.

The remarks by North Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Kim Yong Il set a negative tone at the conference and raised questions about the success of the negotiations, which were scheduled to conclude Friday morning.

Kim at one point accused delegates from Russia and Japan of lying at the instruction of the United States when they tried to point out positive aspects of the American presentation, according to a U.S. official in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Kim said the North intends to formally declare it has nuclear weapons, has the ability to deliver them, and intends to conduct a test, the U.S. official said.

The North Korean said his country was maintaining its position because the United States clearly had no intention of abandoning its hostile policy toward North Korea, the official said.

The statements, coming on the second day of a three-day conference, startled the delegates and left the Chinese representative visibly angry, the official said.

Nevertheless, the diplomats agreed on the need to hold more such talks and probably will, a South Korean official said.

The current round of talks are scheduled to end Friday after three days. The United States, North and South Korea, Russia, Japan and China are trying to balance U.S. demands for an end to North Korea's nuclear program and the communist nation's insistence on a nonaggression treaty with Washington and humanitarian aid.

"There is a consensus that the process of six-party talks should continue and is useful," said Wie Sung-rak, director-general of the South Korean Foreign Ministry's North American Affairs Bureau. Like other delegates from the talks, he chose his words carefully to avoid suggesting a formal agreement had been made.

Asked to verify a Russian media report that all six would meet again within two months, he said: "It's possible, but you have to wait until tomorrow morning."

Russian Alexander Losyukov, the deputy foreign minister and the head of Russia's delegation, earlier had said the six reached a "common understanding" to meet again within the next two months, probably in Beijing, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

The United States said it would hold no formal one-on-one talks with North Korea at the three-day summit and the Americans played down the importance of an informal meeting Wednesday between the top U.S. and North Korean envoys on the sidelines of the talks.

That half-hour meeting between Kim and Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly ended four months of official silence between the two nations.

A U.S. Embassy spokesman in Beijing said "there will not be any separate formal bilateral meetings with the North Koreans." The official spoke on customary condition of anonymity.

Pyongyang had long demanded one-on-one talks with the United States, but dropped its objections to the multilateral arrangement after Beijing agreed to host it.

Many believe North Korea wanted such direct talks to increase its standing in East Asia and to convey its demands directly to the United States. Washington, though, wanted the opposite and said the situation affected the entire region and should be dealt with multilaterally.

The three-day summit came together after months of political maneuvering when China - political ally of North Korea and economic partner of the United States - agreed to be the host. The six-party talks are a continuation of discussions from April, when U.S., Chinese and North Korean officials met in Beijing.

Tensions and hostilities have been escalating since October, when Pyongyang acknowledged - to Kelly himself - that it restarted a nuclear program it had supposedly shut down. The United States has demanded that North Korea stop the program immediately, while the impoverished North has refused to budge without guarantees of security and economic aid.

U.S. officials say they believe North Korea has one or two nuclear weapons, and experts believe it could produce five to six more in a few months.

In a separate meeting after Thursday's talks adjourned, Japan urged North Korea to let the children of five Japanese citizens kidnapped and spirited to North Korea years ago join their parents, who were permitted last year to return to their homeland.

North Korea, however, reiterated its assertion that Japan had broken a promise by not returning the five abductees to Pyongyang, according to a statement by the Japanese government.

The kidnapping of Japanese citizens during the 1970s and 1980s by North Korea - to train its spies to assume false identities - has stalled efforts by the two countries to set up diplomatic relations and halted Japan's food aid to impoverished North Korea.

Delegates from the North and South also got together after the talks ended Wednesday, meeting for a half-hour, said Shin Bong-kil, spokesman for the South Korean delegation.

The Koreas were divided in 1945 and share a heavily fortified border. The 1950-53 Korean War ended without a peace treaty.