Despite its willingness to engage Pyongyang, the United States will continue to exert sanctions to make the regime pay a "significant price" for its provocative behavior, said U.S. State Department on Friday.

The Obama administration wants to have dialogue with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and Iran in order to address "not only concerns that we have about those countries, but the concerns that they may have about U.S.

policy," spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters at the daily press briefing."We are willing to engage North Korea. We are willing to talk to North Korea. But we will continue to use sanctions to enforce the UN Security Council resolution and to have North Korea pay a significant price for its current activities," he said.

Regardless of strong opposition from the international community, the DPRK conducted an underground nuclear test on May 25 and since then has fired at least seven ballistic missiles. It also boycotted the six-party talks on its nuclear program.

Responding to Pyongyang's behavior, the Obama administration decided to extend economic sanctions by prolonging the national emergency on the DPRK and has vowed to enforce sanctions against Pyongyang set in the UN Security Council Resolution 1874.

At the press briefing, Crowley dismissed the speculation that a U.S.-DPRK bilateral dialogue mechanism would replace the six-party talks participated by other four countries -- China, South Korea, Japan and Russia.

"We want to see North Korea come back to the six-party process, " said the spokesman, adding that the Obama administration believes that the process is "the most effective way to deal with the issues that we have with North Korea."

"Within the six-party process, there can be bilateral discussions, not just with the United States, but other countries, as well," he stressed.

"We would like to see North Korea return to the six-party talks and to begin to take irreversible steps, consistent with the agreement it made in 2005 and move aggressively toward a denuclearization," said Crowley.

"There's no mystery here as to what we expect North Korea to do. We are just waiting to see if North Korea is actually going to follow the path that the international community has laid out for it," he added.

(Xinhua News Agency August 15, 2009)