North Korea has proposed resuming the six-way nuclear talks in the week of September 12.

A spokesman for Pyongyang's Foreign Ministry told the North’s official KCNA news agency Monday that Pyongyang hopes to reopen the disarmament talks in the week of September 12 when some of the “dust of war exercises has subsided,” apparently referring to the ongoing joint military drill between South Korea and the United States.

The spokesman blamed the U.S. for the delay in the resumption of the talks, saying the military exercise and Washington’s appointment of a hardliner as a special envoy to monitor the North's human rights conditions had eliminated all possibilities of reopening the talks this week as originally scheduled.

North Korea routinely denounces any joint military exercise between U.S. and South Korean forces as a preparation for invasion and a prelude to actual war.