North Korea has invited the US envoy overseeing ties with the reclusive state to visit for nuclear talks next month, South Korean media said.
North Korea, which has made a series of rare conciliatory gestures this month, also agreed to hold talks with South Korea from today on resuming reunions of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War.
Pyongyang stopped the reunions almost two years ago in anger at the hardline policies of the South's conservative government, which halted unconditional aid handouts and linked its largess to the North ending its nuclear arms ambitions.
Analysts say the North may be softening its tone with Washington and Seoul in an attempt to ease pressure on its coffers, depleted by UN sanctions for its nuclear test in May and facing the threat of a poor harvest.
US envoy Stephen Bosworth would lead a delegation first travelling to South Korea, China and Japan to discuss stalled six-way disarmament-for-aid talks with the North before heading to Pyongyang, the JoongAng Ilbo newspaper said, citing a senior diplomatic source in Washington.
It would mark the first official nuclear talks between North Korea and the Obama administration.
South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted a diplomatic source in Washington as saying the North extended the invitation when former president Bill Clinton visited Pyongyang this month to win the release of two jailed US journalists.
US officials have said they are willing to hold direct talks with North Korea but only as part of six-country disarmament negotiations involving the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States.
Reuters