Seoul - Chief US negotiator Christopher Hill Friday ended last-ditch talks with North Korea to save an imperiled nuclear disarmament deal and returned to South Korea, officials in Seoul said.

Hill had travelled to Pyongyang on Wednesday to persuade North Korea to abide by a nuclear disarmament deal threatened by failure as North Korea announced it is planning to restart its plutonium reprocessing activities.

An official in the Foreign Ministry in Seoul said Hill would now first brief his South Korean counterpart Kim Sook about the outcome of his negotiations.

US officials in Washington said earlier that Hill would offer a face-saving compromise, but no new proposals in his attempt to rescue the 2007 agreement which led North Korea to shut down its plutonium-producing plants.

Washington said it would not fulfil its promise to remove North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism until Pyongyang agrees to procedures to verify its nuclear declaration, allowing international inspectors to check claims made by Pyongyang about its nuclear programme.

North Korea accused the United States of failing to keep its end of the bargain and last week removed seals on its nuclear facilities that were placed there by the UN's international nuclear watchdog. (dpa)