The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has informed the United States it is willing to resume the six-party talks, but did not specify the a date for reopening the long-stalled talks, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said on Tuesday.

In their meeting with US diplomats Monday at the DPRK mission to the United Nations in New York, "the North Koreans said they would return but did not give us a time," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

McCormack's remarks about the latest New York meeting between US and DPRK officials are slightly different from what White House spokesman Scott McClellan said earlier in the day.

McClellan said that the DPRK in talks with the United States gave no indication that it was ready to return to the six-party talks which were designed to solve nuclear issues on the Korean peninsula.

Both McClellan and McCormack stressed that the New York meeting between the United States and the DPRK was a forum to exchange messages, not to negotiate.

McClellan also reiterated US call for Pyongyang to return to the talks which were stalled in June last year as the DPRK accused the United States of adopting a hostile policy towards Pyongyang.

Officials of the United States and the DPRK met in New York on Monday. The meeting was requested by Pyongyang, US officials said.

The United States was represented by Joseph DiTrani, the US special envoy to the six-party talks, and by Jim Foster, the director of the State Department's Office of Korean Affairs, the State Department said.

The DPRK officials at the meeting were Ambassador Pak Gil-Yon and Deputy Ambassador Han Song-Ryol, US officials said.

Source: Xinhua