WASHINGTON, Feb 11 (AFP) - The White House on Friday rejected the notion of holding direct bilateral talks between the United States and North Korea outside six-nation diplomacy to end the crisis over Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program.
"It's not an issue between North Korea and the United States; it's a regional issue," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters.
"There's plenty of opportunity, in the context of the six-party talks, for North Korea to speak directly with us. There has been ample opportunity in the six-party talks in the past for North Korea to speak directly with us," he said.
North Korea could return to the six-party talks -- which also include China, Japan, Russia and South Korea -- if Washington changed its "hostile" policy, a senior North Korean diplomat said in an interview published in Seoul Friday.
"We will come forward if the causes and conditions are met for us to attend six-party talks," Han Song-Ryol, Pyongyang's deputy ambassador to the United Nations, told South Korea's Hankyoreh newspaper.
"If the United States wants to have direct dialogue with us, we can accept that as a change in its hostile policy toward North Korea," Han said.
"All of North Korea's neighbors in the region recognize that this is a regional problem and it requires a multilateral approach for resolving it," said McClellan.
"And we believe the six-party talks ... are the way to resolve the situation," the spokesman said.
There have been three rounds of six-party talks since August 2003, but North Korea boycotted a fourth round in September 2004.
And North Korea threw cold water on diplomacy and raised tension in the two-year-old nuclear standoff by suspending its participation in the talks on Thursday and claiming it possessed nuclear weapons.
"It is important for the United States to change its hostile policy towards North Korea," Han said in the Hankyoreh interview.
Any failure by Washington to have direct dialogue with North Korea "means the United States would not recognize us but aims to destroy our regime," he said.
"North Korea should have no reason to believe that any nation wants to attack them," McClellan countered.
02/11/2005 15:31 GMT - AFP