WASHINGTON » Former U.S. negotiators on North Korea’s nuclear program are urging the Obama administration reopen a dialogue with Pyongyang.

They say the current impasse buys time for development of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

Former Obama administration envoy to North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, and former Clinton negotiator Robert Gallucci made the call in an article in the International New York Times.

During informal talks in Europe last month, they say North Korean officials disclosed that their nuclear weapons program would be on the negotiating table if dialogue resumed. The former envoys say the administration has "healthy skepticism" about the North but the risks of holding new talks, "are less than those that come with doing nothing."

There are indications the North recently restarted a reactor that can make plutonium for bombs.