Updated at 9.34am:
The United
States and North Korea held talks in New York on Thursday about resuming a
formal dialogue, a senior US official said.
''Nothing was immediately settled,'' the official said, referring to
the outcome of the contacts.
Earlier,
the official had mistakenly said the meeting would occur on Friday.
US envoy Jack Pritchard met Pak Gil-yon, the head of the North Korean
mission to the United Nations, in New York two weeks ago to prepare for
the next stage of a dialogue proposed by US President George W. Bush and
accepted by North Korea.
That meeting was to ''confirm that we wanted to talk'' and that the US
approach would be on ''a whole game plan,'' the official said.
The contacts Thursday in New York focused on more specific details of
scheduling the anticipated formal negotiations - the ''who, what and
when,'' he said.
North Korea had criticized the Bush administration for not moving
quickly enough to re-establish dialogue.
Secretary of State Colin Powell recently said the United States will
hold talks with North Korea this month, and his deputy, Richard Armitage,
said Washington wanted to send an official to the North Korean capital.
The aim is to renew the high-level dialogue initiated under President
Bill Clinton that ended when the Bush administration took office in
January 2001.
The main issues of interest to the United States are North Korea's
missile sales, management of international food aid, conventional military
forces along the border with South Korea and compliance with international
obligations on nuclear safeguards.
Although much of the public speculation has focused on Pritchard going
to Pyongyang for the formal resumption of negotiations, it is looking
increasingly as if the administration will send a higher-level envoy.
''We never said it would be Pritchard,'' one US official said.
Officials said the director of the State Department's office of Korean
affairs, a working-level official below Pritchard, attended the Thursday
meeting.
North Korea indicated months ago that it was interested in resuming the
dialogue, even on the tougher terms proposed by the Bush administration.
The United States, Japan and South Korea agreed at a meeting in San
Francisco last week that they faced a ''critical opportunity'' to improve
relations with North Korea, urging comprehensive talks to end its
international isolation.
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