WASHINGTON - The United States said Friday it has granted a visa to a senior North Korean diplomat in an unusual step that comes amid movement toward bilateral talks.

"The State Department has decided to authorize the issuance of visas for Ambassador Ri Gun and his delegation to attend conferences in the United States in late October," spokesman Ian Kelly said in a statement.

The visa was approved in order for Ri, a deputy negotiator in stalled talks over the hermit state's nuclear program, to attend a forum at the University of California in San Diego and a seminar in New York hosted by the National Committee on American Foreign Policy and the Korea Society.

Last week, the communist state expressed conditional willingness to return to six-party nuclear disarmament talks, which it quit in April before testing a nuclear weapon for the second time and launching a series of missiles.

But the North insists on first holding bilateral talks with the United States.

On Monday, Pyongyang test-fired five short-range missiles in what some analysts saw as a show of strength before any US talks.

The six-party talks group the two Koreas, Japan, China, Russia and the United States.