Russia, North Korea and South Korea will hold talks in Moscow this week to prepare for six-way negotiations in Beijing on the North's nuclear ambitions, Itar-Tass quoted a top Russian official as saying.
"The consultations will begin literally the day after tomorrow," Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov told Tass after arriving in Beijing to discuss the six-way talks with Chinese officials.
"We are working on the possibility of conducting a similar meeting with Japan in the near future," Losyukov said. "It is likely that those who are taking part in these consultations will lead the delegations at the talks in Beijing."
North Korea, which had been holding out for bilateral talks with Washington, agreed this month to multilateral talks with the United States, China, South Korea, Russia and Japan.
Tass said Losukov would meet Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who returned on Saturday from a three-day visit to Pyongyang and told reporters the six-party talks would start in Beijing in the latter part of August.
No precise date has been announced but Japan's Nihon Keizai Shimbun daily said the United States, South Korea and Japan had told China they wanted two days of dialogue from August 26.
Beijing hosted initial talks with Washington and Pyongyang in April.
The nuclear crisis erupted in October last year after US officials said Pyongyang had admitted to pursuing a covert nuclear weapons programme.
It escalated after North Korea expelled United Nations nuclear inspectors, pulled out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and restarted a mothballed reactor north of Pyongyang.
North Korea blames US hostility for its decision to scrap a series of international non-proliferation pledges in a quest to build nuclear weapons.