"Reprocessing plutonium is contrary to North Korea's own commitments," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said. "It certainly runs counter to the commitment that they made in 2005, and it violates U.N. Security Council resolutions."

But Kelly stopped short of condemning North Korea's announcement outright, saying instead the United States was focused on getting North Korea back to the stalled six-party nuclear disarmament talks involving the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia.

"What we're focused on with North Korea is getting to the point where we can re-launch the six-party talks, which will get us our ultimate goal, which is the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," Kelly said.

In April, North Korea withdrew from the six-party talks and said it would start reprocessing nuclear spent fuel rods to produce plutonium at the Yongbyon complex, located 90 kilometers north of Pyongyang, in protest of U.N. criticism of its rocket launch earlier that month.

The announcement by Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency came a day after the reclusive nuclear-armed state repeated its call for direct talks with Washington, saying that if the two countries ended their mutual hostility and forged trust, progress could be made toward denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula.

In September, Washington announced a plan to seek direct talks with Pyongyang as part of efforts to resume the six-party talks. But the United States is still deciding when and where to have the bilateral talks, Kelly said.

Sung Kim, U.S. special envoy for the six-way negotiations, met with Ri Gun, director general of the North Korean Foreign Ministry's North American affairs bureau, in New York on Oct. 24 to discuss ways to bring Pyongyang back to the nuclear talks.

Although Kelly characterized the discussion between the U.S. and North Korean officials as useful, the meeting apparently yielded no agreement on full-scale bilateral talks involving Stephen Bosworth, the U.S. special representative for North Korea policy.