The US special representative to North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, is preparing to travel to Pyongyang for three days of talks.

美国派往朝鲜的特使史蒂文·博斯沃思正准备前往平壤进行为期三天的会谈。

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Officials said Mr Bosworth would not offer North Korea any new incentives

The visit is the first high-level contact between US President Barack Obama's administration and Pyongyang.

US officials said Mr Bosworth would try to find out whether Pyongyang was ready to return to the six-party talks on its nuclear programme it left in April.

But they said Pyongyang would not be offered any new incentives刺激，奖励 to do so.

North Korea has been pushing for direct talks with the US.

But US has said it would hold bilateral² talks双边会谈 only as a precursor先驱者，前导 to a return to six-party negotiations⁴.

A senior White House official said Mr Bosworth's first visit to North Korea was "not intended to be an extended bilateral engagement".

"The purpose of their mission is to determine whether the North Koreans are ready and willing to return to the six-party talks and return to a serious discussion of the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula," the AFP news agency quoted the unnamed official as saying.

'No rewards'

The official told reporters at a news conference in Washington DC that Mr Bosworth was "definitely not carrying any additional inducements诱因，动机" to encourage them to return to the talks.

"We don't intend to reward North Korea simply for going back to doing something that it had previously⁵ committed to do," he said.

North Korea pulled out of the talks in April, after the UN Security Council condemned⁶ its testing of long range missiles.

Mr Bosworth is due to hold talks with North Korea's top leaders but it remains⁷ unclear whether he will meet the country's leader, Kim Jong-il.

Analysts⁸ have dampened使沮丧 expectations ahead of the visit, suggesting the most that can be hoped for is a general promise that the North would return to talks sometime.

But the BBC's Michael Bristow in Seoul says that despite the pessimism⁹悲观, the visit itself is a mark of progress.

North Korea had said it would never return to the talks, but there is a chance the meeting with Mr Bosworth could persuade them to start talking again, says our correspondent.

On a recent visit to Beijing, South Korea and Japan, Barack Obama and his hosts all affirmed the importance of getting North Korea back into talks.

Mr Bosworth's first talks with North Korea are expected to last three days. He will then make stops in Seoul, Beijing, Tokyo and Moscow before returning to the US.