North Korean Foreign Minister Pak Ui Chun arrives Wednesday for an official visit to Moscow, where he will hold talks with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
"The Moscow talks will discuss the situation in the Asia-Pacific region. Special attention will be paid to the situation in Northeast Asia, in particular progress in the six-party talks on the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said.
The six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear program, launched in 2003, involve Russia, the United States, North and South Korea, China and Japan.
Under a landmark 2007 agreement, the North pledged to dismantle its plutonium-producing Yongbyon reactor in exchange for fuel aid and other incentives. Deconstruction work began last November.
In late August, however, Pyongyang announced an immediate halt to work on dismantling the Yongbyon reactor, after accusing the United States of failing on its promise to remove North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, which keeps the country in financial isolation.
On Saturday, the United States announced it had removed North Korea from the terrorism blacklist, a move seen to bolster the process of moving toward a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula.