Yang Xiyu, Director of the Korean Peninsula affairs under the Chinese Foreign Ministry, answers reporters' question in New York City, August 11, 2004. (Xinhua)

The two-day informal meeting on Korean Peninsula nuclear program ended Wednesday in New York, and US officials said there was no substantive bilateral contact between the United States and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), two main parties to the issue.

Sponsored by the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, the seminar on Northeast Asian Security was aimed at exploring possible solutions to the standoff over Pyongyang's nuclear program.

Delegates from five participating countries at the six-party talks, China, DPRK, Japan, South Korea and the United States, attended the informal meeting.

Chinese delegate Yang Xiyu, director of the Korean Peninsula Affairs Office, said earlier Tuesday that exchanges in various forms and through different channels help solve sensitive regional and other issues such as the Pyongyang's nuclear issue.

Earlier reports said that US special envoy for Korean affairs Joseph DeTrani and deputy chief of US affairs at the DPRK Foreign Ministry Li Gun, were seen talking with each other during the break of the meeting.

However, US State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said Li and DeTrani only exchanged pleasantries at the conference, and added that there were no one-on-one talks between the US envoy and any other delegates from the six party process.

Ereli also denied a South Korean newspaper report that DeTrani, Li and South Korea's ambassador to the United States, Han Seung-joo, had discussed the nuclear issue at a separate three-way dinner meeting on Tuesday evening.

He described the dinner as "part of the conference proceedings," saying that "there was not an exchange that would meet that description."