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WASHINGTON—The United States and South Korea said Wednesday that patience is wearing thin among international negotiators pressing North Korea to hand over a promised declaration of nuclear weapon efforts.

A spat over the North’s declaration, which was due by the end of last year, has deadlocked six-nation nuclear talks. Disarmament negotiators insist that it address claims of a secret uranium enrichment program and allegations that the North transferred nuclear technology to Syria.

“Time and patience is running out,” South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan said at a news conference with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

During talks among the Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States in October, the North promised to lay out its long history of nuclear weapons development in a formal declaration by the end of 2007, a step toward eventually giving up its atomic bombs and the means to make them. In exchange, North Korea was to receive aid and political concessions, including its removal from U.S. terrorism and sanctions blacklists.