By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer Thu Jun 2, 6:24 PM ET
WASHINGTON - The United States has reaffirmed with South Korea and Japan a strategy of using diplomacy to induce North Korea to halt its nuclear weapons program, but the North has not said whether it will rejoin negotiations, a State Department spokeswoman said Thursday. .
U.S. and North Korean officials met secretly three weeks ago in New York on the nearly yearlong impasse. North Korea has yet to respond to a U.S. effort to renew the six-nation talks, spokeswoman Julie Reside said.
The talks, which involve the Koreas, the U.S., Japan, China and Russia, are sidetracked.
"We have not heard anything back through the New York channel since the May 13 meeting," Reside said.
She referred to the occasional meetings between American and North Korean officials in New York. In the most recent one, a State Department envoy, Joseph DiTrani, and James Foster, who is in charge of the department's office of Korean affairs, met with North Korean officials during what spokesman Richard Boucher then called a working-level meeting.
In late April, the State Department dismissed reports that it had advised its negotiating partners that North Korea was on the verge of conducting its first weapons test.
But last month, some U.S. officials, citing spy satellite data, reported suspicious activity, such as digging of tunnels, that could indicate a test was imminent.
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld left Thursday on a trip to Asia and Europe that was to include a stop at an Asian security conference in Singapore. North Korea was expected to be a leading topic.
After the New York talks surfaced, Boucher said the meeting was designed to drive home the point to the North Koreans that they should end their boycott of nuclear negotiations.
Instead, North Korea has escalated its rhetoric. North Korean officials branded Vice President Dick Cheney a "bloodthirsty beast" and said Thursday that his recent description of ruler Kim Jong Il as irresponsible offered further reason to stay away from the talks.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said the verbal assault was "the same kind of bluster we hear from North Korea from time to time." He added, "When they make provocative statements, they only further isolate themselves."
The latest allied strategy talks were held Wednesday in Washington. Senior U.S. negotiator Christopher Hill met separately with Kenichiro Sasae, director general of the Japanese foreign ministry, and with South Korea's deputy foreign minister, Song Min-Soon.
Reside reaffirmed that U.S. policy is "to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue through the six-party diplomatic process."
Hill also discussed with Soon preparations for the talks South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun will hold with President Bush at the White House on June 10.
The Bush administration is prepared to offer assurances to North Korea that it will not be attacked. U.S. partners have dangled economic inducements to the communist nation.
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