North Korea ruled out on Monday attending proposed six-way working-level talks on its nuclear arms programmes and questioned the entire negotiating process, blaming hostile US policy for Pyongyang's tougher stance.
But a Chinese analyst and South Korean officials saw a large measure of pre-talks bluster in the comments from a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman and predicted the talks would go ahead before the end of September. Pyongyang has in the past raised the rhetorical volume before attending talks or making a concession.
The working-level talks had been expected last week but failed to materialise, leading diplomats to suggest North Korea could be seeking to drag out the process as the US presidential election in November approaches.
"The US has destroyed itself the foundation for the talks, making it impossible for the DPRK to go to the forthcoming meeting of the working group," the spokesman said in comments published by the official KCNA news agency.
"It is clear that there would be nothing to expect even if the DPRK sits at the negotiating table with the US under the present situation," the spokesman said.
"Now that the process of the six-party talks is retracting from the desired direction due to the US attitude and nothing can be expected from the next round of the talks, it is clear such talks for the form's sake would be helpful to no one."
He did not explicitly rule out attending the full talks.
The spokesman pointed to the airlift last month of more than 460 North Korean refugees to the South from Southeast Asia, recent human rights legislation in the United States and what he described as US comments that a military option to solve the crisis was not ruled out.
A senior South Korean official, who asked not to be identified, said he still expected a fourth round of the main talks to be held before the end of September as planned and that the working-group talks could immediately precede them.
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