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WASHINGTON, June 7 (Xinhuanet) -- The Democratic
People's Republicof Korea (DPRK) has informed the United States it is willing to
resume the six-party talks, but did not specify the a date for reopening the
long-stalled talks, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said on Tuesday.
In their meeting with US diplomats
Monday at the DPRK mission to the United Nations in New York, "the North Koreans
said they would return but did not give us a time," State Department spokesman
Sean McCormack said.
McCormack's remarks about the latest New York meeting
between US and DPRK officials are slightly different from what White House
spokesman Scott McClellan said earlier in the day.
McClellan said that the DPRK in talks with the United
States gave no indication that it was ready to return to the six-party talks
which were designed to solve nuclear issues on the Korean peninsula.
Both McClellan and McCormack stressed that the New
York meeting between the United States and the DPRK was a forum to exchange
messages, not to negotiate.
McClellan also reiterated US call for Pyongyang to
return to the talks which were stalled in June last year as the DPRK accused the
United States of adopting a hostile policy towards Pyongyang.
Officials of the United States and the DPRK met in
New York on Monday. The meeting was requested by Pyongyang, US officials said.
The United States was represented by Joseph DiTrani,
the US special envoy to the six-party talks, and by Jim Foster, the director of
the State Department's Office of Korean Affairs, the State Department said.
The DPRK officials at the meeting were Ambassador Pak
Gil-Yon and Deputy Ambassador Han Song-Ryol, US officials said. Enditem
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