The United States said Wednesday it will hold rare direct talks with North Korea next week on ending the authoritarian state's nuclear programme and announced it was replacing its chief envoy.

 

The State Department said that US and North Korean officials will meet Monday and Tuesday in Geneva but insisted that the talks were "exploratory" and that it was premature to consider a resumption of full-fledged negotiations.

 

Satellite image shows a nuclear reactor site in Yongbyon, North Korea. (file pic)

 

"What we want to see is a seriousness of purpose," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said, calling for "firm signs" from North Korea that it will adhere to a 2005 six-nation agreement on denuclearisation.

 

"We're not going, as we have said many times, to reward North Korea just for returning to the table or give them anything new for actions they've agreed to take," Toner told reporters.

 

But Toner said that US officials sensed a "good atmosphere" when they held initial talks with a North Korean delegation in July in New York, making the State Department feel that a second round would be useful.

 

Toner said Stephen Bosworth was stepping down as the US coordinator on North Korea policy and would be replaced by career diplomat Glyn Davies. The two men will head together to Geneva.

 

Seventy-one-year-old Bosworth has served as ambassador to three countries including South Korea during a career spanning five decades but considered his latest job part-time. He spends much of his time in the Boston area or overseas as dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

 

Toner described Bosworth's resignation as a personal decision and said it did not indicate any shift on North Korea, which along with its main ally China has pushed for the resumption of six-nation talks which also involve South Korea, Russia and Japan.

 

"This is a change in personnel, not a change in policy," Toner said.

 

"He has been in this job for nearly three years and he does have significant responsibilities in his job at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, so I think he wanted to focus on that," Toner said.

 

Davies now serves as the US representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna and has previously held senior State Department positions including deputy spokesman.

 

Pyongyang watcher L. Gordon Flake, executive director of the Mansfield Foundation, downplayed theories that Bosworth's departure showed that the administration wanted to devote more time to North Korea.

 

Instead, Flake said that the appointment of Davies -- a non-proliferation specialist who unlike Bosworth has no direct experience on North Korea -- showed that the administration believed the nuclear issue was paramount.

 

"Putting non-political professionals in these positions doesn't bespeak of grandiose, Hail Mary plans on North Korea. This is a careful, coordinated and measured approach done in consultation with our allies South Korea and Japan," Flake said.

 

President Barack Obama has made dialogue a priority in his foreign policy but North Korea until recently was a notable exception, with his administration furious over provocations including a deadly attack last year on a South Korean island.

 

North Korea has made some conciliatory gestures since then. It is holding talks with the United States this week in Bangkok on resuming searches for the remains of thousands of Americans missing from the 1950-53 Korean War.

 

Senator Jon Kyl, a senior member of the rival Republican Party, pledged to watch closely to make sure that the Obama administration offers "no incentives" to North Korea.

 

"The days of paying North Korea in exchange for promises that it does not intend to fulfil are over," Kyl said.

 

But Victor Cha, a senior adviser on North Korea to former president George W. Bush, said that dialogue can help ease tensions, even if a breakthrough is unlikely.

 

"North Korea leaves you only with bad and worse options. Avoiding dialogue only promises a runaway nuclear program and more provocations," sad Cha, now a scholar at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies and Georgetown University.

 

"Dialogue may not get denuclearisation, but it does help to manage the situation, avert a crisis... and possibly offer small victories in freezing elements of the program," he said.

 

"It's not great, but it may be all we can hope for," he said.

 

The State Department also announced that Clifford Hart, another career diplomat, would serve under Davies as envoy to the moribund six-way talks. He replaces Sung Kim, who was named ambassador to South Korea.

 

- AFP/wk/fa