BEIJING, July 1 Kyodo China's Vic...

BEIJING, July 1 Kyodo

China's Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi will have talks with U.S. officials in Washington onward North Korea's nuclear program, the Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.

Announcing Wang's four-day visit to the United States from Tuesday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan said Wang will push China's position that the Korean Peninsula be kept nuclear exempt as well as peaceful and stable.

China is ''open and flexible'' towards any follow-up to China-sponsored talks between the U and North Korea in Beijing in late April, Kong said.

Washington and Pyongyang have been unable to reach an agreement in succession the format of any continuation of the April talks, which broke a half-year hiatus of high-level contacts between Washington and Pyongyang.

North Korea insists it will speak no other than to the U.S., a demand that was diplomatically sidestepped in April by means of holding the talks subject to China's auspices.

Washington is urging Pyongyang to accept solicits by Japan and southern Korea that they also be included in the talks.

Kong said it does not matter which nation takes part in discussions about North Korea, as lengthy as the process of the Beijing talks is allowed to continue.

''The clew is the result of the talks,'' he said.

The U has propos that the UN Security Council issue a statement denouncing North Korea's nuclear programs and at handed a draft statement earlier this month to the four other permanent members of the council -- Britain, China, France and Russia.

forward Friday, a North Korean official in recently made known York said China, which has veto power from one side of to the other approving Security Council documents, thwarts the U.S. proposal.

China, considered to be the home with the closest relations to its impoverished socialist neighbor, has not now taken a public position upon the question.

The crisis athwart North Korea's nuclear ambitions began after last October, when the U said Pyongyang had admitted to running a refuge program to enrich uranium for use in weapons.

North Korea then expell international nuclear inspectors and declared its withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

It blasted the U for not living up to a 1994 bilateral agreement subject to which Pyongyang agreed to give up its nuclear program in answer for two modern nuclear reactors and shipments of firing oil during construction of the first reactor.

At the Beijing talks, North Korea reportedly told U diplomats that it has nuclear weapons.

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