MOSCOW, July 27 (RIA Novosti) - North Korea on Monday said it was ready for bilateral talks with the U.S. but repeated it would not rejoin the six-party talks over its nuclear program, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported.
Washington has been unresponsive to Pyongyang's request, demanding the North return to the international talks involving the two Koreas, Russia, China, Japan and the United States.
"We still want North Korea to come back to the negotiating table," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday. "We believe that the six-party talk framework which had everybody included is the appropriate way to engage with North Korea."
Last week North Korea launched a bizarre verbal attack on Clinton, calling her vulgar and unintelligent after she likened the communist state to an unruly child.
An unnamed spokesman to North Korea's Foreign Ministry said that Clinton's remark during an interview she gave while visiting New Delhi showed that she was "by no means intelligent."
Pyongyang made it clear in a statement on Monday that it would not rejoin the six-party nuclear talks, which it said sought only to "disarm and incapacitate" the nation.
On Friday, North Korea's ambassador to the United Nations, Sin Son Ho, told reporters the country was "not against a dialogue" with Washington.
After a meeting with her counterparts from Russia, China, Japan and South Korea, Clinton stressed the unanimity of the international community on negotiations with Pyongyang.
"We have made it very clear to the North Koreans that if they will agree to irreversible denuclearization, the United States as well as our partners will move forward on a package of incentives and opportunities including normalizing relations," Clinton told reporters in the Thai resort of Phuket last week.
The communist state quit the talks and announced the restart of its nuclear weapons program after the UN Security Council condemned its April 5 long-range missile launch. The Security Council imposed tougher sanctions on the North after it conducted its second nuclear test in May.
