North Korea, US to hold nuclear talks next week

SEOUL: North Korea and the United States will hold a second meeting next week in Geneva to discuss ways to restart stalled six-nation talks on the North's nuclear disarmament, a report said Monday.

"I have learned that a high-level dialogue between North Korea and the US will be held in Geneva," Yonhap news agency quoted a diplomatic source as saying, adding the meeting may be on October 26.

The South Korean foreign ministry said it had no information on the reported talks.

The two sides held a first round of discussions in New York in late July to assess the chances of resuming the talks, which also include South Korea, China, Russia and Japan.

South and North Korean nuclear negotiators met separately, in Bali in July and in Beijing last month, but no clear progress was reported from the Beijing meeting.

The North abandoned the six-party talks in April 2009 and staged its second nuclear test a month later. It now wants an unconditional resumption.

The US and South Korea say the communist state must first take steps to show it is serious about the process, for example by shutting down its uranium enrichment programme, which could be reconfigured to make atomic weapons.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011