US and South Korean envoys were set Tuesday to begin a new diplomatic initiative to bring North Korea back to the nuclear disarmament talks it quit 10 months ago.
The US's special envoy Stephen Bosworth and its chief nuclear negotiator Sung Kim were to leave Tuesday US time for China, South Korea and Japan, the State Department said.
South Korea's chief negotiator Wi Sung-Lac departed for Beijing Tuesday afternoon on a similar mission.
The State Department said the Americans have no plans to meet North Korean officials, and there is no sign Pyongyang is ready to return to the six-nation disarmament forum.
"We are looking for a signal from North Korea, and we’re still waiting for that signal," spokesman P.J. Crowley said Monday.
It was unclear when Bosworth and Sung Kim would be in each country.
China, the communist North's sole major diplomatic and economic ally, is trying to bring it back to the talks hosted by Beijing since 2003.
Senior Chinese party official Wang Jiarui visited Pyongyang this month for talks with leader Kim Jong-Il and China's nuclear negotiators met their North Korean counterparts in Beijing.
But media reports said the North is sticking to its preconditions for returning to dialogue: the lifting of United Nations sanctions and a US commitment to discuss a formal peace treaty on the Korean peninsula.
The United States, South Korea and Japan -- the other members of the talks which also include Russia -- say the North must first return to dialogue and show it is serious about denuclearisation before other issues are dealt with.
"The (Seoul) government maintains that discussions on a peace treaty will be possible only after we make progress in denuclearisation," Wi told reporters.
Yun Duk-Min, professor at Seoul's Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security, said China was trying to narrow the gap between North Korea and the other countries, notably the United States.
"It remains to be seen how things will end up, as North Korea wants to extort as many gains as possible from others before returning to six-party talks while China plays good cop and the United States bad cop," he told AFP.
But Yun said he believes it would come back to the talks eventually.
Under deals in 2005 and 2007 the North agreed to scrap its nuclear weapons in return for aid and major diplomatic and security benefits, including a formal peace pact.
But the talks became bogged down by disputes over ways to verify disarmament and in April last year the North quit them altogether.
Pyongyang, which tested atomic weapons in October 2006 and May 2009, says it developed nuclear weaponry because of a US threat of aggression, and it must have a peace pact before it considers giving them up.
The 1950-53 Korean War ended only in an armistice. Seoul officials suspect talk of a peace treaty is an excuse to delay action on the nuclear programme.
During his two-day stay in Beijing, Wi said he would meet chief nuclear negotiator Wu Dawei, who held the talks with the North Koreans this month.
Either Bosworth or Sung Kim will return to Washington in time for a meeting Friday between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-Hwan.
South Korea's Yonhap news agency said a senior official of North Korea's ruling party arrived in China Tuesday and may deliver a letter from Kim Jong-Il to President Hu Jintao.
The visit by Kim Yong-Il, director of the party's international department, follows Wang's visit to Pyongyang.
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