The Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue (NEACD) in San Diego ended on Wednesday with no official bilateral contact between representatives from the U.S. and North Korea.

The three-day conference was hosted by the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation at the University of California.

NEACD founder Susan Shirk said in a news conference that North American affairs chief for the North Korean Foreign Ministry Ri Gun was seated next to U.S. special envoy to the six-party nuclear talks Sung Kim for the conference.

She said that the atmosphere seemed good between the two high-level officials, adding that they had no official bilateral contact, apart from the NEACD.

Ri and other North Korean delegates are scheduled to fly to New York on Thursday morning and will stay there until November second. Expectations are high that he will meet bilaterally with the U.S. to discuss the communist state’s nuclear situation.