The New Nation - Internet Edition

AP, Seoul

Top diplomats from the U.S. and North Korea will meet next week along with their counterparts from regional nuclear talks, a South Korean official said Friday, the highest level of contact between the countries amid recent progress on Pyongyang's disarmament. The talks, including U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and North Korean Foreign Minister Pak Ui Chun, will take place on the sidelines of an Asian security meeting in Singapore that all the countries' foreign ministers had already planned to attend, the official said.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the organizer of the nuclear talks, China, had not yet made a formal announcement about the meeting.

The talks would be the first time the countries' top diplomats have met since the six-nation arms negotiations began in 2003. Along with the U.S. and North Korea, the arms talks include China, South Korea, Japan and Russia.

The meeting comes as North Korea has promised to wrap up the disabling of its main nuclear facility by later this year, meaning it would not be able to easily resume making plutonium for bombs.

However, the sides have not yet agreed on details for the more critical next step - dismantling the North's facilities and ridding the country of nuclear bombs and radioactive material to make them.