WASHINGTON -- In an apparent policy reversal, North Korea has told the United States that it will return to international negotiations on abandoning its nuclear program, but it did not say when, U.S. officials said yesterday.

Bush administration officials had urged North Korea to resume the long-stalled talks with the United States, South Korea, China, Russia and Japan as soon as possible.

At a meeting Monday in New York that was requested by the North Koreans, the country's U.N. ambassador told U.S. diplomats that it was willing to resume the long-stalled talks, U.S. officials said. "The North Koreans said they would return to the six-party process, but did not give us a time certain when they would return," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

At the United Nations, Chinese Ambassador Wang Guangya said the talks could resume soon. "I welcome it, because my government has worked very hard to push the resumption of the six-party talks," he said. "I am glad that now they agreed, and I assume that this will be resumed pretty soon, in the next few weeks."

But some analysts said the North Korean pledge to return to the talks might be a stalling tactic. "It's certainly not a breakthrough by any definition," said L. Gordon Flake, a North Korea specialist at the Washington-based Mansfield Foundation. "This is a vague statement designed to take the most immediate heat off."

The last round of six-party talks were held in Beijing nearly a year ago. Despite months of diplomatic pressure from the United States and its allies to return to the table, Pyongyang announced in February that it possessed nuclear weapons and would not resume negotiations.

In March, Pyongyang released a statement saying it would no longer discuss abandoning its nuclear programs, but, as a declared nuclear power, it would discuss mutual disarmament with the United States.

In April, South Korean officials said North Korea had shut down its nuclear reactor, possibly to harvest fissile material for a warhead.

Pyongyang has said the United States must drop its "hostile policy" toward North Korea as a condition for the talks. There was no indication yesterday that North Korea had dropped that condition or had blunted its refusal to discuss the unilateral nuclear disarmament that its neighbors have demanded, Flake noted.