Washington - US President Barack Obama is to send a top diplomat to North Korea for discussions aimed at resuming international disarmament talks with Pyongyang, The Washington Post reported Tuesday. The report, which cited senior US officials, came as warships belonging to North and South Korea clashed off their west coast Tuesday and shortly before Obama begins a four-nation tour of Asia this week.
The decision to send Stephen W Bosworth, Obama's special representative for North Korea, to re-engage Pyongyang in nuclear talks was made last week, the Post reported.
No date has been set for the visit, but it was likely to take place before the end of the year and comes at the request of the increasingly isolated North Korean regime, the report said.
North Korea has twice conducted nuclear weapons tests in recent years and six-nation nuclear disarmament talks with Pyongyang have stalled.
In recent months, North Korea has signalled its interest in one-on-one talks with the United States. Washington maintained it is open to direct dialogue - only in the context of the six-nation format - which also involve South Korea, China, Japan and Russia - and only after Pyongyang retakes steps to comply with a 2005 disarmament agreement.
In August, former US president Bill Clinton travelled to North Korea to secure the release of two imprisoned American journalists and raised hope for a thaw in relations and progress to resolve the stalemate over Pyongyang's nuclear activities.
Last month, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the United States would never establish normalized relations with North Korea as long as the Stalinist state has nuclear weapons.
"Current sanctions will not be relaxed until Pyongyang takes verifiable, irreversible steps toward complete denuclearization," Clinton said. "Its leaders should be under no illusion that the United States will ever have normal, sanctions-free relations with a nuclear-armed North Korea."
The latest round of six-nation talks to end Pyongyang's nuclear programme were held in December.
North Korea pulled out of the talks in April and in May conducted its second test of a nuclear device. The detonation, along with repeated test firings of missiles, prompted another round United Nations Security Council sanctions.
