  In the area covering the complex of the North America and Pelican nebulae we
identified 13 faint stars with J-H and H-Ks color indices which simulate
heavily reddened O-type stars. One of these stars is CP05-4 classified as O5 V
by Comeron and Pasquali (2005). Combining magnitudes of these stars in the
passbands I, J, H, Ks and [8.3] we were able to suspect that two of them are
carbon stars and five are late M-type AGB stars. Interstellar extinction in the
direction of these stars was estimated from the background red clump giants in
the J-H vs. H-Ks diagram and from star counts in the Ks passband. Four or five
stars are found to have a considerable probability of being O-type stars,
contributing to the ionization of North America and Pelican. If they really are
O-type stars, their interstellar extinction A(V) should be from 16 to 35 mag.
Two of them seem to be responsible for bright E and J radio rims discovered by
Matthews and Goss (1980).
