South Korea and the United States on Tuesday agreed to wait a few more days for Pyongyang to shut down its nuclear facilities, the South Korean Foreign Ministry said.

South Korean Foreign Minister Song Min-soon and his U.S. counterpart Condoleezza Rice discussed the nuclear facilities issues at a telephone conversation on Tuesday and stressed the need to continue working closely with other parties to push forward the process of the six-party talks, the Foreign Ministry said in a press release.

"The two ministers reaffirmed that the door to the solution of the BDA issue is clearly open to the North (the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, or DPRK), and agreed to continue working with the involved nations to resolve the issue," the ministry said.

The decision came after Pyongyang missed a Saturday deadline, which is an agreement adopted by the six parties during their latest six-party talks on Feb. 13, to shut down its nuclear facilities at Yongbyon.

Under the February agreement, DPRK was supposed to shut down and seal the Yongbyon facilities within 60 days in exchange for 50, 000 tons of heavy fuel oil or equivalent aid.

According to the ministry, Song and Rice "expressed strong expectations that the North will take the denuclearization steps under the Feb. 13 agreement at an early date."

Source: Xinhua