HAKONE, Japan : US chief negotiator Christopher Hill on Saturday brushed aside a North Korean call for direct military talks, saying all peace deals are discussed between governments.

Amid progress on a deal on freezing North Korea's nuclear programmes, the communist state's army Friday called for talks with the US military.

The two countries have never signed a treaty to end the 1950-53 Korean war.

"I think people need to understand that any peace process, peace mechanism, is one that would be done by directly related governments, not militaries," Hill told reporters at the Japanese hot spring resort of Hakone.

Hill is on a regional tour ahead of the next round of six-nation talks on North Korea, formally known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), starting Wednesday in Beijing.

"If the DPRK has new thoughts on the peace process in the Korean peninsula, we very much look forward to hearing about it from their government, most likely through the six-party mechanism," Hill said.

"But we haven't heard any thoughts with this regard. I would encourage people to understand we have invested a lot in the six-party process.

"We believe this is the right way to address these problems of denuclearisation, problems of energy needs, and more fundamentally, creating a great sense of neighbourhood in the region.

"So we don't want to do anything that would undermine that process," Hill said.

The United States has repeatedly held bilateral meetings with North Korea but says all settlements must be through six-way talks, which also involve China, Japan, Russia and South Korea.

The six-nation deal reached in February, under which the North would scrap its nuclear weapons programmes, envisages talks on a peace treaty.

Hill said he expected the first step in the deal - the closure of Yongbyon reactor, which produces raw material for bomb-making plutonium - to take place by Monday. - AFP/ch