BEIJING (Sputnik) – The official added that five-party talks without North Korea were unlikely to yield a result.
"They have been stopped. As of today there are no prospects to return to the six-party talks, but as far as prospects are concerned, no side to the negotiations sees any alternatives, they do not exist," Denisov told Russian media outlets in an interview.
The six-party talks on turning the peninsula into a nuclear-free zone began in August 2003 and led to North Korea freezing its nuclear program and even preparing for a demolition of a Yonben reactor, but ground to a halt in 2008 as the United States and North Korea failed to reach an agreement on the manner of checking the inventory of Pyongyang's nuclear programs.
North Korea has been under pressure from the international community since its January nuclear test and a long-range rocket launch in February, which resulted in tightening sanctions against Pyongyang in the new UN Security Council resolution in March. On September 9, Pyongyang carried out a new nuclear test at its northeastern test site.
