The United States hopes to hold the next six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear crisis in November, visiting U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly said Wednesday.
"We're hoping to have something within the next month, or five or six weeks," Kelly, the key U.S. official dealing with Pyongyang, told reporters after meeting with Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda in the morning.
Kelly was in Tokyo for an informal meeting with Japanese and South Korean officials to coordinate policies toward North Korea.
"We will continue to try to make sure that the North Korean side understands that the best way to security in the future is not through nuclear weapons," Kelly said. "And this is the effort that we are working together on a very close basis with the Japanese and the South Korean side, as well as with the Chinese and Russians."
Kelly also expressed disappointment over North Korea's speech at the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday in which it said it was not interested in another round of six-nation talks because of Washington's hostile stance toward Pyongyang.
"We are a little disappointed about the speech that the DPRK's vice minister made at the United Nations. It's a little different from what we recalled," he said.
While no specific date for future talks was set when Japan, South Korea, the U.S., North Korea, China and Russia held their first meeting in Beijing in August, a Japanese government source said diplomats are "continuing talks" to realize another meeting sometime around November.