Rice in China to seek progress on North Korea
BEIJING (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State CondoleezzaRice was due to meet China's top leaders in Beijing on Tuesdayto discuss how to persuade North Korea to fully declare itsnuclear programmes as a step toward eliminating them.
North Korea has promised to abandon all nuclear weapons andprogrammes in exchange for economic and diplomatic incentivesin a 2005 agreement between the two Koreas, China, Japan,Russia and the United States.
However, the deal has been stymied by Pyongyang's failureto meet an end-2007 deadline to disclose its nuclearprogrammes.
A senior U.S. official said Rice hoped her Asian trip wouldact as "a real catalyst to get over this bar of a gooddeclaration" and she particularly wanted help from China, theNorth's major trading partner and traditional Communist ally.
"We continue to believe that if anyone is capable ofconvincing the North that this kind of transparency is the onlyway forward, it's the Chinese," said the official, who spokeanonymously because of the sensitivity of the diplomacy.
According to U.S. officials and analysts, the stickingpoint has been Pyongyang's reluctance to discuss any nucleartechnology it may have transferred to other nations, notablySyria, as well as its suspected pursuit of uranium enrichment.
The United States has questions about any possible NorthKorean role in a suspected Syrian covert nuclear site that wasbombed by Israel in September. Syria has denied having anuclear programme but the case remains murky.
INAUGURATION
Rice, who attended South Korean President Lee Myung-bak'sinauguration in Seoul on Monday, arrived in Beijing on Tuesdayand flies to Tokyo on Wednesday.
She has no plans to visit Pyongyang, where the New YorkPhilharmonic orchestra will play a concert featuring the worksof Antonin Dvorak and George Gershwin on Tuesday.
In Beijing, Rice was due to meet Chinese President HuJintao, Premier Wen Jiabao and Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi.
The talks are likely to touch on efforts to get a thirdU.N. Security Council resolution passed imposing sanctions onIran for its nuclear programme, as well as on human rights, anissue in focus ahead of this year's Olympic Games in Beijing,
Rice also plans to discuss how the six nations that reachedthe agreement on ending North Korea's nuclear ambitions mightmonitor it, including tracking whether North Korea proliferatesnuclear technology in the future.
The Bush administration has championed a "ProliferationSecurity Initiative" (PSI), which organised countries in avoluntary but controversial programme to share intelligence andinterdict trade in weapons of mass destruction.
Charles "Jack" Pritchard, a former U.S. negotiator withNorth Korea, said that by expanding the six-party process tocover such issues Washington hoped to "formalise discussionabout what North Korea is up to regarding proliferation withouthaving to twist arms to get the (others) to join PSI".
Japan, Russia and the United States are all members of PSIwhile China, South Korea and North Korea -- one of the primetargets of the effort -- are not.
"I am less certain that North Korea will agree. It comesclose to institutionalising Pyongyang as a permanent defendantin the court of six-party talks," Pritchard said.
(Additional reporting by Lindsay Beck in Beijing; Editingby Nick Macfie)