Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have agreed on several principles that will guide their countries’ efforts in dealing with North Korea in the coming months.

China’s Xinhua News quoted Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell as saying Tuesday that one of the principles Yu and Clinton agree on is the possibility for U.S.-North Korea talks within the framework of the six-nation discussions.

Campbell, who recently visited Japan, said that although there have been a series of interactions between the United States and its partners in the six-way nuclear talks, the essential focus is that the members of the nuclear negotiations return to the dialogue framework and that they encourage North Korea interlocutors to accept that reality.

Campbell added that should the United States decide to have bilateral interactions with North Korea, it will only be as part of a process to get back to the six-party framework.

Campbell’s remarks came after Yu and Clinton met for around an hour on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York.