Rice says North Korea must agree to strong verification

By Sue Pleming

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Thursday after talks with North Korea that she believed Pyongyang was under no "illusions" it had to agree to a strong mechanism to verify its nuclear activities.

On Wednesday, Rice joined ministers from South Korea, Russia, China and Japan in rare, "informal" talks with North Korean's Foreign Minister Pak Ui-chun on the sidelines of a Southeast Asian forum.

"I don't think the North Koreans left with any illusions about the fact that the ball is in their court and that everybody believes they have got to respond and respond positively on verification," Rice told reporters.

She said Wednesday's meeting -- the first time a U.S. foreign minister sat down with the North Koreans since 2004 -- delivered a strong message that Pyongyang must quickly agree to the so-called verification protocol circulated earlier this month among the six parties.

Wednesday meeting's set the stage for a formal negotiating session when the ministers next meet in Beijing, China's Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said. No date has been set for those talks, which previously had been at the envoy level.

In late June, the North presented a long-delayed account of its nuclear weapons program that contained information on its plutonium production.

Rice said the declaration left open a lot of questions that needed to be answered with a strong verification mechanism. The declaration also did little to address U.S. suspicions of a secret uranium enrichment program.

TRUSTING NUMBERS

"Nobody is going to trust the North Korean number they have given on plutonium they made. Fortunately, there are very good tried and true internationally-recognized methods to verify the number of kilograms of plutonium made," she said.

"This will have to be specific, it will have to have specific measures, it will have to have means for access and it will also have to have means to continue this process as new information becomes available," she added.

On Friday, U.S. North Korea negotiator Christopher Hill plans to visit the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna to discuss the North Korea dossier and how the U.N. nuclear watchdog can be involved.

"We have to have a protocol that allows us to know what has happened there and is still happening," said Rice.

After North Korea delivered its long-delayed accounting of nuclear activities last month, President George W. Bush responded by beginning a 45-day process to remove Pyongyang from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Asked whether the 45-day notification period to U.S. Congress could be changed if North Korea did not agree on the verification procedures in time, Rice pointed out that the 45-day time period was the minimum required.

"We are watching very carefully to see whether or not North Korea is going to come through on the essential issue of verification," Rice said.