WASHINGTON, May 27: US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Tuesday rebuffed a North Korean call for bilateral talks on its suspected nuclear arms programme and said Washington wants to address the matter in multilateral talks.

Over the weekend North Korea said it would be willing to hold multilateral talks apparently including South Korea and Japan but only after one-on-one talks with the United States, something Washington has strenuously opposed.

“I’ve been reading those statements and we always examine closely whatever they say, but we are still committed to multilateral talks, expanded multilateral talks, if there are going to be future talks the way we want to do it,” Powell told reporters.

The United States, North Korea and China held three-way talks on the issue in Beijing last month during which US officials say Pyongyang told them it possesses nuclear weapons, an admission that raised tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

The United States has insisted on multilateral talks in part because it believes it has little chance of persuading North Korea to give up its nuclear ambitions unless Beijing uses its economic influence to pressure Pyongyang. —Reuters