By Park Song-wu
Staff Reporter
The United States reopened its New York communication channel last week to deliver the message to North Korea that it wants to resume the six-party nuclear talks without preconditions, the State Department said in a news briefing on Monday.

The message was delivered to Pyongyang when officials from the two sides met in New York on Nov. 30 and Dec. 3, State Department Deputy Spokesman Adam Ereli said.

But he denied the conjecture that Washington began bilateral talks with Pyongyang to deal with the Stalinist country’s nuclear ambition.

``The purpose of those meetings was not to negotiate with North Koreans,’’ he said. ``The purpose was to state to the North Koreans that the United States is ready to resume the six-party talks at an early date and without preconditions and that we want to resolve the nuclear issue diplomatically.’’

Ereli said the Washington government had first asked for the North to have the meeting. He declined to elaborate on the North’s reaction to the U.S. proposal.

Amb. Joseph DeTrani, Washington’s special envoy for negotiations with Pyongyang, represented the U.S. at the meetings, Ereli said. But he did not say who represented the North.

Earlier reports in South Korea said it was Han Song-ryol, deputy chief of the North’s mission to the United Nations.

DeTrani, who serves as deputy chief for the U.S. delegation to the six-party talks, was in Beijing yesterday on a three-nation trip that will also take him to Seoul today and Tokyo tomorrow.

His discussions in the region are expected to focus on ways to break the deadlock in the six-party process. The countries involved are the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Japan and Russia.

The nuclear forum has met three times so far, but little progress has been made. A fourth round was supposed to take place before the end of September, but North Korea refused to attend.

North Korea declared on Saturday that it will not return to dialogue until reelected U.S. President George W. Bush better clarifies his second administration’s policy toward Pyongyang.

The dispute began in October 2002 when U.S. officials said North Korea had admitted to secretly pushing a uranium-based nuclear weapons program.

im@koreatimes.co.kr