A U.S. special envoy condemned North Korea Monday for being increasingly recalcitrant about international calls to honor its denuclearization pledges but stressed that Washington and Beijing have "firmly" agreed on the importance of a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula.

Ambassador Glyn Davies, who serves as Washington's special envoy for North Korea policy, met with his Chinese counterpart Wu Dawei in Beijing earlier in the day. The China trip is the first leg of the envoy's Asian tour that will also take him to South Korea and Japan later this week.

"In terms of where we are with North Korea, let me just say that there are troubling, further signs that the DPRK (North Korea) is even more directly rejecting its responsibility to live up to its obligations to denuclearize," Davies told reporters.

While the U.S., China, South Korea and Japan have been discussing ways to compel North Korea to get back to the path of denuclearization, Davies said, "Instead, they are moving further and further away from that."

Davies called attention to a resolution adopted by the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency last week that unanimously condemned North Korea for trying to develop its nuclear capabilities, including the restart of a reactor that many analysts say can produce nuclear bomb material.(Yonhap)