A U.S. diplomat met Thursday with Russia's nuclear envoy to discuss how to restart disarmament talks with North Korea, and Russian news reports said no resumption was likely until at least mid-December, AP reported. The meeting between U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Alexeyev came after the North agreed last week to end a yearlong boycott of the Chinese-organized nuclear talks. No date has been set. No details of the Burns-Alexeyev meeting were immediately released. But Alexeyev told Russian reporters «the resumption of six-party talks over the settlement of the situation on the Korean Peninsula is not possible earlier than mid-December,» Russia's Itar-Tass news agency reported. The talks include China, the two Koreas, the United States, Japan and Russia, who last met in late 2005. The North then refused to return in protest over U.S. financial sanctions imposed on North Korean companies and a Macau bank that dealt with them.
