U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Sunday expressed commitment to six-party talks despite North Korea's repeated vow "never ever" to return to the multilateral nuclear negotiations. "We believe that the six-party talk framework, which had everybody included, is the appropriate way to engage with North Korea, Clinton said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"They've engaged in a lot of provocative actions in the last months," she added. "But what we, China, Russia, South Korea, Japan, and literally the unanimous international community have said is it's not going to work this time."

Clinton was apparently responding to remarks from North Korea's ambassador to the UN Sin Son-ho, who had on Friday again declared the six-party talks dead while angling for bilateral talks with the U.S. Clinton made it clear that bilateral talks are only possible within the framework of the six-party talks.

"And I think they are very isolated," she said. "Now, I saw that when I was at the ASEAN meeting... They don't have any friends left, and what we've seen even Burma saying that they're going to enforce the resolution of sanctions."

She reiterated the importance of dealing with the two U.S. journalists detained by the North separately from the nuclear issue. "We believe that this is on a separate track. This is an issue that should be resolved by the North Koreans granting amnesty and allowing these two young women to come home as quickly as possible."

"The messages that we've received from the young women... are that they're being treated well, that they have been given the supplies that they need. But obviously, they want to resolve this, as we do, and we work on it literally every day," she added.