The United States wants to continue talks with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) only in the framework of six-party talks, US State Department said on Thursday.

"We've made clear to North Korea for a long time, within the six-party framework, there's plenty of room for a bilateral dialogue," State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters at the daily press briefing.

"North Korea knows what it has to do. It has to come back to a six-party process, be willing to take the kinds of steps that the international community has made clear that it needs to do," said the spokesman.

"The ball is still in North Korea's court," said Crowley.

Crowley's remarks came one day after New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson hosted two DPRK diplomats in his mansion for an informal meeting, which was described by Richardson as a hopeful sign for improving relations between Washington and Pyongyang.

After the meeting, Richardson told reporters that Pyongyang is prepared to have a dialogue with the United States, but that it is still resisting participating in the six-party talks.

The Obama administration claims that the bilateral dialogue with Pyongyang should be in the DPRK's denuclearization process guided by the six-party talks mechanism, which involved also China, the Republic of Korea, Japan and Russia.

According to an agreement signed at the six-party talks in February 2007, the Bush administration agreed to begin discussion on normalization of relations with the DPRK, in exchange for Pyongyang's shutdown of its nuclear facilities.

The talks on normalizing the US-DPRK relations were kicked off in March 2007, but few developments have been made because the denuclearization process on the Korean Peninsula was often drawn in the stalemate.

Dismissing international opposition, the DPRK conducted an underground nuclear test on May 25 and since then has fired at least seven ballistic missiles. It also boycotted the six-party talks on its nuclear program.

Responding to Pyongyang's behavior, the Obama administration has decided to extend economic sanctions by prolonging the national emergency on the DPRK and has vowed to enforce sanctions against Pyongyang set in the UN Security Council Resolution 1874.

(Xinhua News Agency August 21, 2009)