The United States and North Korea have failed to break a deadlock over measures to verify Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program in talks held in New York, AFP reported Monday quoting U.S. officials.
The talks between the State Department's top Korea expert, Sung Kim, and his North Korean counterpart Friday were a follow-up to a meeting held about three weeks ago in Beijing over verification of the North's nuclear program that was declared in June.
"Sung Kim last week had very detailed and substantive discussions with his North Korean counterpart and on the subject of verification," department spokesman Robert Wood was quoted as saying.
Asked whether there was an agreement, he said Washington would continue to hold talks with the hard-line communist state in a bid to break the deadlock.
Washington said it would remove North Korea from the list of countries sponsoring terrorism if Pyongyang agreed to a comprehensive verification protocol proposed at the last six-nation talks aimed at disbanding the state's atomic weapons arsenal.
But Pyongyang wanted the United States to remove it from the blacklist first as part of what it called an "action-for-action" plan.