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North Korea’s former nuclear negotiator will visit the United States this week after officials from the two Koreas agreed on the need to resume nuclear disarmament talks in a rare meeting, a report said on Sunday.

Kim Kye-gwan, the North’s first vice foreign minister and former chief nuclear envoy, will visit New York City around Thursday and meet with senior US officials, Yonhap news agency said, citing Seoul diplomatic sources.

Kim will discuss the North’s nuclear issues and possible resumption of US food aid with Stephen Bosworth, the US special envoy on North Korea, as well as other officials, it said.

“South Korea and the US government have long coordinated Kim’s visit to New York and the US will soon make an official announcement,” said the official quoted by Yonhap.

Kim was Pyongyang’s chief envoy for the six-party aid-for-denuclearization talks on the North for years before being promoted to first vice foreign minister last year.

The trip, if realized, comes after Pyongyang and Seoul held rare meetings between senior diplomats and spoke of resuming the disarmament talks that have been deadlocked for more than two years.

Seoul’s nuclear envoy Wi Sung-lac and his new Pyongyang counterpart Ri Yong-ho met on Friday on the sideline of an Asian security forum in Indonesia.

Both emerged saying they hoped to re-start the six-party talks, before their foreign ministers also had a brief encounter on Saturday ahead of the regional security dialogue. Details of their conversations are not known yet.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the United States was “encouraged” by the surprise talks but remained cautious on resuming the disarmament forum.

The six-party denuclearization forum, grouping two Koreas, the United States, Japan, China and Russia, has been deadlocked since the last meeting in December 2008.

The impoverished communist state, believed to have enough plutonium for six to eight atomic bombs, stormed out of the talks in April 2009 and a conducted its second nuclear test a month later.

The North also revealed an apparently operational uranium enrichment plant at its Yongbyon atomic complex to visiting US experts last November, claiming it was a peaceful energy project.

Experts however said the program could easily be reconfigured to produce weapons-grade uranium to augment the country’s plutonium stockpile.

The North has recently expressed a desire to resume the talks, but Washington said Pyongyang should mend ties with Seoul first.

Cross-border ties have been icy since Seoul accused Pyongyang of torpedoing one of its warships with the loss of 46 lives in March 2010.

The North angrily denied involvement but went on to shell a border island last November that left four South Koreans including two civilians dead.

Agence France-Presse