A senior US official said here onThursday that Washington expects to resume six-party talks, designed to solve nuclear issues on the Korean peninsular, this month or January of next year.

"Our whole emphasis is to get talks started again, maybe sometime in December, certainly in January," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told a news briefing.

However, Boucher said, the resumption of the six-party talks "doesn't lie in Washington; it lies in Pyongyang".

"We haven't seen or heard anything from North Korea (the Democratic People's Republic of Korea) on the subject," he added.

By far, three rounds of the six-party talks, sponsored and presided by China, have been held. The other five parties are the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), the US, the Republicof Korea, Japan and Russia.

A fourth round, scheduled for September, failed to be held due to the DPRK's refusal to attend, saying "its groundwork was destroyed by the US and because South Korea's nuclear issue surfaced."

Pyongyang has been accusing Washington of taking hostile policytowards the DPRK, and of applying "double standards" over South Korea's nuclear issue.

Source: Xinhua