SEOUL, Feb 25, 2010 (AFP) - Stalled six-nation nuclear disarmament talks could resume very soon if North Korea decides to end its boycott on the negotiations, a US envoy said Thursday.
"We are prepared to resume six-party talks in the very near future," Stephen Bosworth told reporters on arrival in South Korea, his second stop in a three-country mission to revive the nuclear dialogue.
But the envoy, who earlier held talks in China, which hosts the six-party forum, said he did not know whether the North would rejoin the talks.
Bosworth said such a return would be "in everyone's interests".
The talks grouping the two Koreas, Japan, China, Russia and the United States were last held in December 2008 before getting bogged down in disputes over verifying disarmament.
In April last year the North declared the forum "dead". It staged its second atomic weapons test and ballistic missile launches before indicating readiness in principle to return to dialogue.
Bosworth, the US special envoy on North Korea, met his Chinese counterpart Wu Dawei in Beijing Wednesday to assess prospects of resuming negotiations, but little progress was reported.
South Korea's chief nuclear negotiator Wi Sung-Lac also met Wu as part of a two-day visit to Beijing that began on Tuesday.
Wi, quoted by South Korea's Yonhap news agency, said the future was unclear.
"We will have to wait and see because it is still not clear how the consultations (on the resumption of the six-party talks) will go," he added.
The North has two conditions for returning to dialogue: the lifting of UN sanctions and a US commitment to discuss a formal peace treaty on the Korean peninsula.
The United States, South Korea and Japan, where Bosworth will travel Friday, say it must first return to dialogue and show seriousness about denuclearisation.
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