A US delegation, including the special envoy to the stalled six-nation nuclear talks, held talks on May 13 at the North Koreans' United Nations office in New York, the first such contact since December, officials said Thursday.

"We know there was contact and it was made with the aim to resume the six-way talks," Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda, the government spokesman, told a news conference.

Asked whether the nuclear negotiations could resume, Hosoda said: "We think the possibility has become greater."

North Korea last took part in the talks -- which include the two Koreas, China, Japan, the United States and Russia -- in June last year, boycotting a round in September citing US hostility.

Pyongyang has sent out a series of defiant statements on its nuclear programme and US officials have expressed fears that it is about to carry out an atomic test.

After declaring in February it had nuclear weapons to defend itself, North Korea said this month it had unloaded 8,000 spent fuel rods from its reactor, allowing it to reprocess weapons-grade plutonium for more nuclear bombs.

According to a South Korean official quoted by the Yonhap news agency, the US delegation told North Korea that Washington recognises Pyongyang as a sovereign state and had no intention of attacking it.

US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in Washington that the United States had sought the New York meeting.

"We try to make sure they understand our whole policy position, including the various aspects, and particularly the need for North Korea to return to talks and be ready to discuss the substantive issues there," Boucher said.

North Korea agreed Thursday at a border meeting with South Korea to continue high-level bilateral talks but it did not use the occasion to indicate a preparedness to return to the nuclear dialogue.

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