North Korea has turned down a US offer for fresh talks, saying it is not interested in more talks merely aimed at "appeasing us", state media reports.
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North Korea's nuclear negotiator Kim Myong Gil said in the report that his US counterpart Stephen Biegun had offered through a third country to meet again.
Pyongyang has set Washington a deadline for the end of the year to show more flexibility in the negotiations.
Kim and Biegun met last month in the Swedish capital for the first time since US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un agreed in June to reopen negotiations.
The talks have been stalled since a failed summit in Vietnam in February.
But the Stockholm meeting fell apart, with Kim Myong Gil saying the US side had failed to present a new approach.
"If the negotiated solution of issues is possible, we are ready to meet with the US at any place and any time," Kim Myong Gil said in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency.
He called Biegun's proposal a "sinister aim of appeasing us in a bid to pass with ease" Pyongyang's year-end deadline.
"We have no willingness to have such negotiations."
North Korea has been seeking a lifting of punishing sanctions, but the US has insisted Kim Jong-un must dismantle his nuclear weapons program first.
The North Korean statement came after US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Mark Milley reaffirmed that the United States was ready to use the "full range" of its capabilities to defend South Korea from any attack.
Senior US defence officials are gathering in Seoul for annual meetings as the two countries face intensifying threats from North Korea to stop joint military drills.
The US is also seeking a greater financial contribution from South Korea for hosting American troops.
It is also urging Seoul to revoke its decision to scrap an intelligence-sharing pact with Japan known as GSOMIA, which Washington worries would undermine trilateral cooperation.
Milley met his South Korean counterpart General Park Han-ki for the annual Military Committee Meeting (MCM) on Thursday.
Both sides discussed ways to maintain solid defence posture and a planned transfer of wartime operational control to South Korea, a joint statement said, even as they have scaled back joint exercises to expedite negotiations with North Korea.
Australian Associated Press
