"At the recent DPRK (North Korea)-US talks, the DPRK put forward a new proposal to have six party talks without going through the three party talks and to have the DPRK-US bilateral talks there," the North's foreign ministry spokesman said in an interview with state-run Korean Central News Agency.

The spokesman said the US-North Korean contact was made in New York on Thursday.

He noted that Washington had notified Pyongyang indirectly that bilateral talks could follow a multilateral dialogue.

"Some time ago the US informed the DPRK through a third party that the DPRK-US bilateral talks may be held within the framework of multilateral talks," he said.

Seoul officials said earlier Friday North Korea had directly notified key regional players -- South Korea, Japan, the United States, Russia and China -- that it is ready to meet them in six-way nuclear crisis talks.

The Stalinist state's latest move triggered optimism that a breakthrough in the nine-month nuclear stand-off was at hand.

No date for talks has been fixed, but a senior US official said talks could take place as early as this month. Seoul officials said the venue looked highly likely to be Beijing.

The current nuclear crisis was triggered in October when Washington revealed that Pyongyang had broken the 1994 accord and was running a nuclear program based on enriched uranium.

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