THE NUCLEAR STELLAR CORE, THE HOT DUST SOURCE, AND THE LOCATION OF THE NUCLEUS OF NGC-1068

We present new near-infrared speckle and adaptive optics imaging and i ntegral field spectroscopy of the nuclear region of NGC 1068. Ninety-f our percent of the K-band light in the central 1'' originates from a l ess than or equal to 30 milliarcsecond diameter source whose position we determine to coincide within +/- 0''.15 with the apex of the cone s tructure seen in the optical narrow emission lines, as well as the loc ation of the flat spectrum radio component S1 and the 12 mu m emission peak. We interpret the compact source as hot dust near the sublimatio n temperature within similar to 1 pc of the true nucleus of the galaxy . The remaining 6% of the light in the central 1'' comes from a modera tely extincted stellar core centered on the nuclear position and of in trinsic size similar to 50 pc. We show that this nuclear stellar core is probably 5-16 x 10(8) yr in age and contributes at least 7% of the total nuclear luminosity of similar to 1 x 10(11) L..