The United States Friday said it would hold direct talks with North Korea to persuade Pyongyang to return to the stalled international nuclear disarmament talks, Yonhap News Agency said Saturday.

"We are prepared to enter into a bilateral discussion with North Korea ... and it's designed to convince North Korea to come back to the six-party process and to take affirmative steps towards denuclearization," Philip Crowley, assistant secretary of state for public affairs, said.

Noting the new development, South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman, Moon Tae-young, said the nation has held a position that it would not oppose direct talks between Washington and Pyongyang as long as they help promote the North's denuclearization, AP said.

North Korea has said it will boycott the multilateral talks for good, complaining they have been used to infringe upon its sovereign right to develop nuclear and space technology.

Pyongyang has demanded Washington deal with it bilaterally for a breakthrough, while Washington insisted on resolving the dispute through the six-party process also involving South Korea, China, Japan and Russia.

Crowley would not characterize the impending two-way meetings with the North as a policy shift by the U.S.

The six-party agreement, signed in September 2005, calls for North Korea's nuclear dismantlement in return for massive energy and economic aid, normalization of ties with Washington and Tokyo and the establishment of a permanent peace regime to replace the fragile armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War.

Crowley said that details of a bilateral dialogue will be decided soon, citing the time table of "in the next couple of weeks."