Beijing - North Korea no longer wants direct talks with the United States to ease the nuclear standoff, China's official Xinhua News Agency on Saturday cited a North Korean foreign ministry spokesperson as saying.
The unnamed spokesperson also reportedly reiterated the communist regime's refusal to resume six-party nuclear disarmament talks.
"The DPRK has no justification to take bilateral talks... on the nuclear issue of the Korean Peninsula with the United States now," Xinhua quoted the North Korean official as saying. DPRK is the acronym for the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
The spokesperson said Pyongyang was unwilling to hold direct talks with Washington because of an alleged hostile US policy toward North Korea and its alleged persistence in trying to topple the communist regime, Xinhua said.
The spokesperson also repeated Pyongyang's announcement that it would "suspend its participation in the six-party talks for an indefinite period," Xinhua said.
North Korea said last week it was boycotting the talks until Washington abandoned what it called a hostile policy toward the North. It also made the claim that it had nuclear arms.
The announcement posed a further setback to continued attempts to hold disarmament negotiations with the isolated Stalinist regime.
A North Korean diplomat last week reportedly requested direct talks with Washington as a way out of the impasse - a move the White House rejected.
The spokesperson said North Korea wanted to "solve the nuclear issue through dialogue and negotiations" but it was not clear from the Xinhua report who Pyongyang was willing to hold talks with.
Restarting the six-country talks has taken on greater urgency since North Korea's claim that is has nuclear weapons.
China has hosted three inconclusive rounds of six-nation talks since 2003. North Korea refused to attend a fourth round, scheduled for last September.
The talks involve the two Koreas, the United States, China, Russia and Japan.
A top Communist Party official, Wang Jiarui, arrived in Pyongyang on Saturday for talks aimed at bringing North Korea back to the negotiating table.
Washington hopes Beijing - Pyongyang's last major ally - will use its economic influence over North Korea to get it to stop developing nuclear weapons. China is an indispensable source of fuel and trade for the impoverished North. - Sapa-AP
Xinhua quoted an unnamed North Korean spokesman as stating that "The DPRK North Korean government has no justification to take bilateral talks... on the nuclear issue of the Korean Peninsula with the United States now." North Korea has demanded that the United States end its perceived hostile policy toward North Korea before talks can begin again.

Last week, North Korea claimed to have successfully developed , and pushed for two-party talks with the US. The US and China have pushed for multiple party talks. Though North Korea has not provided any substantial proof for its weapons claims—and has not performed the ceremonious "" usually required by declared nuclear powers to demonstrate their capability—US intelligence agencies believe that North Korea may have produced anywhere from two or three such weapons ('s guess) upwards to fifteen ('s guess). The estimates were made on the basis of the amount of  the North Koreans would have been able to recover from their  at .