SEOUL: Staring each other down across the Pacific Ocean, North Korea and the US remain locked in a stalemate over resolving their nuclear standoff with both sides calling on the other to back off first-- positions that appear no closer to reconciliation since Pyongyang's atomic test.

An agreement reached last year between North Korea and five other nations as part of a six-party disarmament process is supposed to be the basis for the next phase of efforts to resolve the crisis. But the agreement itself is vague enough to cloud the way forward, a potentially risky situation given that North Korea has raised the stakes by its entry into the nuclear club.

The North agreed several weeks after its Oct 9 nuclear test to return to arms talks, and Washington has said the revived negotiations will take place by the end of the year. But preliminary discussions this week in Beijing on setting a date for the talks appear to have made little headway.

More than a year since the last six-nation nuclear negotiations were held, the North is sticking to its calls for Washington to end a campaign to isolate the communist nation from the international financial system for its alleged counterfeiting and money laundering.

The US says it's open to talk about its blacklisting of a Macau bank where the North held accounts, but also wants to see Pyongyang take concrete steps towards denuclearisation before giving any concessions.

This week in Beijing, the North and US didn't agree on a date for the resumed nuclear talks.—AP