WASHINGTON, Jumada I 12, 1437, February 21, 2016, SPA -- The United States rejected a North Korean proposal to discuss a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War because it did not address denuclearization on the peninsula, the State Department said on Sunday, according to Reuters. State Department spokesman John Kirby made the comment in response to a Wall Street Journal report that the White House secretly agreed to peace talks just before Pyongyang's latest nuclear bomb test. The newspaper, citing U.S. officials familiar with the events, said the Obama administration dropped its condition that Pyongyang take steps to curtail its nuclear arsenal before any peace talks take place, instead calling for North Korea's atomic weapons program to be just one part of the discussion. Pyongyang declined the proposal, and its Jan. 6 nuclear test ended the diplomatic plans, the newspaper reported. " To be clear, it was the North Koreans who proposed discussing a peace treaty," Kirby said in an emailed statement. "We carefully considered their proposal, and made clear that denuclearization had to be part of any such discussion. The North rejected our response," he said. "Our response to the NK proposal was consistent with our longstanding focus on denuclearization." --SPA 23:32 LOCAL TIME 20:32 GMT www.spa.gov.sa/w