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The United States and North Korea have agreed to work together to reopen the stalled six-party talks on the North's nuclear program in early July and a foreign ministerial meeting in early August, a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said Saturday.

The U.S. and North Korea "agreed to consider the possibility of opening a meeting of six-party chief delegates in early July and a six-party foreign ministerial meeting on the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum, which will be held in the Philippines in early August, and cooperate to achieve those goals," the unidentified spokesman said in a statement carried by the North's Korean Central News Agency.

The statement came a day after Christopher Hill, Washington's chief nuclear negotiator, ended a surprise two-day visit to the communist country. Hill said in Seoul Friday that the North showed readiness to promptly shut down its nuclear facilities as agreed on under a February deal.

In Pyongyang, Hill met with his North Korean counterpart Kim Kye-gwan and the country's foreign minister, Pak Ui-chun, the statement said.

"The discussions were comprehensive and very productive," it said.

The six-party talks, which involve the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Japan and Russia, have been stalled since Pyongyang missed an April 14 deadline to shut down its nuclear facilities in a dispute over $25 million of its funds that was once frozen at a Macau-based bank under U.S. restrictions.

North Korea made the dispute a condition on its promise to take denuclearization steps. The banking issue was later resolved in a separate deal between the U.S. and North Korea.

A team of inspectors from the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is due to arrive in Pyongyang Tuesday to discuss modalities for the promised shutdown of the North's Yongbyon complex, the U.N. nuclear watchdog announced Friday.

The Yongbyon reactor would be shuttered after North Korea and the U.N. nuclear watchdog agree on monitoring and verification modalities, Hill told reporters on Saturday after a meeting with his Japanese counterpart, Kenichiro Sasae.

"We do expect this to be soon, probably within three weeks ... though I don't want to be pinned down on precisely the date," he said.

A meeting of chief delegates from the six countries involved, if held, is likely to be an informal forum, as it would come before the complete shutdown of the Yongbyon facility, according to South Korean officials.

Under a Feb. 13 agreement, the countries are supposed to hold a meeting of their foreign ministers shortly after the North implements the initial phase of the historic aid-for-disarmament deal.

North Korea is to receive 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil, to be provided by South Korea, for shutting down the Yongbyon facility.

An additional 950,000 tons of equivalent assistance will be provided later once the North disables its nuclear complex and submits a complete list of all its nuclear programs to the IAEA, a process the chief U.S. nuclear negotiator said Friday was "achievable" within the year.
SEOUL, June 23 (Yonhap News)