North Korea reportedly agreed to hold two rounds of talks with the United States before returning to multilateral denuclearization talks during a meeting with the U.S. last week.

Foreign Policy Magazine quoted officials close to the Washington-Pyongyang negotiations as saying Wednesday that the agreement was made when North Korea’s deputy nuclear negotiator, Ri Gun, and top U.S. nuclear envoy, Sung Kim, met last week in San Diego and in New York.

According to the magazine, the U.S. proposed three conditions for talks. The first is that the North agrees to return to multilateral talks after two rounds of bilateral talks with the U.S. are held. The second is that U.S. special representative for North Korea policy, Stephen Bosworth, be allowed to hold talks with the North's First Vice Foreign Minister Kang Sok-ju. And the third is that Pyongyang abide by the September 19th, 2005 Joint Statement by swiftly abandoning its nuclear ambitions and returning to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

The North reportedly accepted the first two conditions but balked on the third, saying they wanted to resume talks based on the idea of a complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

Previously, the North had insisted on returning to the six-party talks on its nuclear program in the event bilateral talks with the U.S. produced positive results.