Sung Kim, who heads the State Department's Korea office, "will meet with the group on the margins" of events organized by the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, a non-governmental organization (NGO), it said.

"Details of the meeting have not yet been finalized," the department said in a statement sent by e-mail in response to a question at the daily press briefing on Friday.

The North Korean delegation, due in New York for the NGO events on November 7, will be headed by Ambassador Ri Gun, director general for North American Affairs at the North Korean foreign ministry in Pyongyang, the statement said.

Sung Kim has been deeply involved in the six-party nuclear disarmament negotiations involving the United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia.

The partners in the negotiations must formally agree to a verification regime for the disarmament process now that the United States and North Korea have resolved a months-long dispute.

On October 11 the United States struck North Korea from a list of countries which allegedly support terrorism after Pyongyang agreed to steps to verify its nuclear disarmament and pledged to resume disabling its atomic plants.