BEIJING : US envoy Christopher Hill said Wednesday that international efforts to end North Korea's nuclear programmes were going well, a day before Pyongang was due to begin disabling its atomic facilities.

"I think we are in pretty good shape on that," Hill said of the disablement plans, before heading into meetings with his North Korean counterpart, Kim Kye-Gwan, in Beijing to ensure there were no last-minute problems.

"There are a couple of issues that have to be worked through but I think we have an agreement on what we're doing generally."

North Korea has said it would start disabling its nuclear facilities on November 1 and complete the process by the end of the year, a deadline set under a landmark accord brokered in six-nation disarmament talks in February.

A US inspection team is due to travel to North Korea on Thursday to witness the start of the disarmament process.

Under the February accord, North Korea would receive one million tonnes of fuel oil or equivalent forms of aid for giving up its nuclear programmes.

The impoverished country has already received 100,000 tonnes of oil in return for switching off its main nuclear reactor at Yongbyon.

Under the accord, the North, which conducted its first test of an atomic bomb in October last year, would also receive wide-ranging diplomatic concessions and security guarantees if it follows through on its disarmament commitments.

In Seoul, South Korean Foreign Minister Song Min-Soon said Wednesday that the imminent disabling of the facilities would be the North's first step towards completely abandoning its nuclear ambitions.

"This is the first step for the North's nuclear abandonment," Song said.

"Once the disablement is completed, it would take North Korea a considerable period of time to restart the facilities."

Song said the team would engage in disablement procedures in 10 sectors including a five-megawatt reactor, nuclear fuel reprocessing facilities and a fuel fabrication plant at the Yongbyon complex.

The reactor's fuel rods produced the raw material for bomb-making plutonium.

Hill also said the disablement steps would significantly set back the North's programmes.

"It will take considerable time, considerable expense were they ever to want to reconstitute (the programmes)," he said.

Under the six-nation accord brokered in February, North Korea is expected to eventually completely scrap its nuclear facilities, declare and hand over all of its atomic material, including plutonium stockpile, and any nuclear weapons.

In return, it could expect normalised relations with the United States and Japan, a lifting of sanctions and a pact formally ending the 1950-1953 Korean War.

China is the host of the six-party talks, which began in 2003 with the aim of convincing the North to give up its nuclear ambitions. The other nations involved are South Korea, Japan and Russia.

In Beijing, Hill was expected to on Wednesday also meet China's chief envoy to the talks, Wu Dawei.

He is then due to travel on Thursday to South Korea for briefings on the issue and then to Tokyo on Friday. - AFP/ch