Rice to attend South Korean inauguration

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will travel to Seoul for the inauguration of South Korean President-elect Lee Myung-bak on February 25 and then on to China and Japan, the State Department said on Friday.

Discussions in all three nations will cover the stalled effort to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons programs under a September 2005 agreement negotiated between the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States.

Rice's visit will be her first to the region since North Korea missed a December 31 deadline to fully disclose its nuclear programs, which is regarded by other members of the six-party talks as a vital step toward ending its nuclear ambitions.

She will not visit Pyongyang, said a senior U.S. official who asked not to be named.

North Korea, which conducted a nuclear test in October 2006, has taken some steps to meet its six-party agreement obligations, including proceeding with the disablement of its key nuclear facilities at Yongbyon.

However, it is not clear whether Pyongyang is willing to fully carry out the agreement, which commits North Korea to "abandoning all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs."

Under subsequent agreements, North Korea is slated to take steps including the dismantling of its nuclear facility at Yongbyon, in exchange for economic and diplomatic incentives from the United States and others.

U.S. officials have made clear they would drop North Korea from the U.S. State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism and end other sanctions once it has produced the nuclear declaration and completed disabling Yongbyon.

Some analysts wonder if Pyongyang may have decided to slow down the six-party process and wait to resume negotiations with the next U.S. president, who will take office in January 2009. Others question whether it has any real intention of giving up its nuclear programs.