| GEO World | | US, NKorea agree to hold bilateral meetings: report | Updated at: 0743 PST, Wednesday, November 04, 2009
SEOUL: The United States and North Korea have agreed to hold two rounds of bilateral meetings before the North returns to multilateral nuclear disarmament talks, a US news report said.
The agreement was reached at last month's meetings in New York and San Diego between officials from the two sides, Foreign Policy magazine said on its website, in a report seen Wednesday.
The communist state, putting further pressure on the United States to start direct talks, announced Tuesday it has completed reprocessing spent fuel rods to produce more plutonium for its atomic weapons programme.
The US State Department responded that the plutonium production "runs counter" to the North's disarmament commitments and violates UN Security Council resolutions.
It said it has not decided when and where to hold bilateral talks involving the US special envoy to North Korea, Stephen Bosworth.
Foreign Policy, quoting an administration official, said "substantial progress" was made in talks between Sung Kim, the State Department's special envoy to six-party talks, and visiting North Korean official Ri Gun.
The North has said it is ready to return to the six-party nuclear disarmament talks which it abandoned in April, but only if it first has bilateral discussions with Washington to improve relations. |  |
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