The White House said Wednesday the United States and its negotiating partners are “anxious' for North Korea to return to nuclear disarmament talks after Pyongyang moved to restart its nuclear program with expulsions of U.S. and other international nuclear monitors. “The [Obama] administration and I believe all those involved are anxious for the North Koreans to come back to the table in line with agreements to dismantle their nuclear program,” spokesman Robert Gibbs said one day after Pyongyang vowed to restart its atomic programs over anger at U.N. Security Council condemnation of North Korea's recent missile launch. State Department spokesman Robert Wood said the United States would speak with other parties in the six-country negotiating process—South Korea, China, Japan, and Russia—about the next step forward. “We've worked very hard with a number of countries to try to … achieve that long-term goal of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula,” Wood told reporters, adding that the process had “a lot of ups and downs.”
