Beijing ? North Korea has agreed to return this month to six-nation talks aimed at eliminating its nuclear arsenal, ending a yearlong boycott, U.S. officials and the North Korean government said Saturday.

The agreement to restart the talks was reached at a rare dinner meeting here between a senior U.S. envoy and his North Korean counterpart, held shortly before Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived Saturday night for talks with Chinese officials on the North Korean issue.

During the meal, Kim Gye Gwan, the North Korean deputy foreign minister, told Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill that North Korea was willing to attend talks in Beijing the week of July 25, according to a senior U.S. official traveling with Rice. In what U.S. officials took as an encouraging sign, they reported that Kim said the purpose of the talks was the “denuclearization of the Korean peninsula” and that North Korea intended to make progress at the negotiations.

Rice met with Chinese President Hu Jintao, Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing and other Chinese officials this morning. She then was to fly to Phuket, Thailand, for a scheduled tour Monday of damage from last winter’s Indian Ocean tsunami. She then planned to return to East Asia for talks with Japanese and South Korean officials, also focusing largely on the North Korean issue.

Rice, after meeting with Li, said China and the United States agreed that resumption of the talks “is only a first step. The real issue now is to make progress at these talks.”