U.S. to attend six-party North Korea talks in Moscow

The February 19-20 meeting in Moscow coincides with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit to Seoul, part of her first trip abroad that includes Japan, Indonesia and China.

The Moscow conference will focus on the framework for broad six-party talks in which North Korea agreed in 2005 to abandon its nuclear programmes, spokesman Robert Wood said. The talks include the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States.

The six-party talks have not led to an agreement on how to verify disarmament by Pyongyang, which tested a nuclear device in 2006 and has been slow to carry out agreements on disabling its plutonium program.

A recent bout of North Korean sabre-rattling has raised tension, with Pyongyang saying that it is ending all agreements with South Korea and that the peninsula is on the brink of war.

President Barack Obama's new administration is reviewing U.S. policy towards North Korea, but Wood said this did not preclude U.S. participation in the working group meeting in Moscow.

"You can go to meetings and offer preliminary views, hear from others. I don't see anything unusual about that," he said.

The U.S. delegation to the Moscow meeting will be led by Alexander Arvizu, deputy assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific affairs, he said.

(Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by David Storey)