SEOUL, Sept 2: China blamed the United States on Tuesday for the lack of progress at last week’s talks on the North Korean nuclear crisis and urged it to soften its policy towards Pyongyang.

In a statement, North Korea expressed willingness to resolve the crisis through dialogue, backing away from its earlier rejection of more talks.

China’s parliamentary chief Wu Bangguo, on a visit to countries in the region, said in Manila that Washington was responsible for the absence of progress at last week’s six-party talks in Beijing.

Asked what he thought was the biggest obstacle to progress at the talks, Mr Wang said: “The American policy towards DPRK — this is the main problem we are facing.”“We want the United States to make clear about its position,” he said.

The Chinese leader called for a concerted diplomatic push to find a peaceful settlement of the crisis.

“We have made the first concrete step through the six-nation talks (toward resolving the nuclear issue peacefully),” said Mr Wu later in Seoul, He was accompanied by Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi, China’s chief delegate to the talks.

“We must push through with dialogue,” Mr Wu said.

In Beijing, A spokesman for China’s foreign ministry downplayed pessimism simmering over North Korea’s angry rejection of more talks, saying the next round should focus on addressing US policy on Pyongyang.

“In the six-way talks, and actually before the talks, the antagonism between the DPRK and the US was serious,” foreign ministry spokesman Kong Quan said.

“How the US is threatening the DPRK, this needs to be further discussed in the next round of talks, especially between the US and the DPRK,” Mr Kong said.

North Korea’s official media accused the United States of spoiling the Beijing talks, but made no reference to its angry rejection of further meetings.

“It was totally because of the United States’ brigandish insistence that the six-nation talks became a place for fruitless, impracticable propositions,” the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

“We remain firm in our position to resolve the nuclear issue between DPRK (North Korea) and the United States peacefully, through dialogue,” the agency said in a Korean-language commentary monitored here.

The commentary was seen as confirmation by the communist state it plans to press on with negotiations despite a stream of bellicose rhetoric against the six-nation talks.

A day after multilateral talks closed in Beijing on Friday, North Korea described them as “useless”, adding that it intended to build up its nuclear deterrent.

The Beijing talks, attended by the two Koreas, China, Russia, Japan and the United States, failed to yield any tangible results, but delegates agreed to talk again at a date yet to be fixed.

SOUTH KOREAN FM: Earlier in the day, South Korean Foreign Minister Yoon Young-Kwan left for Washington to discuss the outcome of the Beijing talks.