The United States has confirmed that it will send a senior envoy next week to Beijing for talks with North Korea on its nuclear programme.
The talks will be the first substantive contact since leader Kim Jong-Il died on 17 December.
Glyn Davies, the co-ordinator for US policy in North Korea, will meet veteran North Korean negotiator Kim Kye-Gwan on 23 February.
The US State Department said they will resume the dialogue that was called off after Kim died.
The US has been exploring a resumption of six-nation de-nuclearisation talks with North Korea but has insisted that Pyongyang respect a 2005 agreement to give up its atomic weapons.
The US held two rounds of talks with North Korea last year in New York and Geneva in hopes of keeping open a dialogue, despite deep scepticism in Washington on whether the Communist state will ever give up its weapons.
A third round of talks was due to take place in Beijing in December but was postponed after the sudden death of Kim Jong-Il, which left the isolated and nuclear-armed country in the hands of his untested young son Kim Jong-Un.
Scott Snyder, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that North Korea had been eager to resume discussions with the US, in part to show that the regime is operating as it was before Kim Jong-Il's death.
China, which is North Korea's main ally, has also supported a return to talks.
