Rice arrives in S. Korea at start of East Asia tour

Rice will also visit China and Japan to try to make progress on the six-nation disarmament deal, which is currently bogged down by disagreements over a promised North Korea nuclear declaration.

In Seoul, Rice will attend Monday’s inauguration of President Lee Myung-bak and will hold talks with him, outgoing Foreign Minister Song Min-soon and Song’s designated successor Yu Myung-hwan.

Under the accord, the North was supposed to have disabled its main plutonium-producing atomic plants and to have declared all nuclear programs by last December.

Disablement is going ahead, but the declaration is being held up by disagreements over what it should include. The United States says the communist state must fully answer suspicions that it bought equipment for a covert uranium enrichment bomb-making program. The North denies such a program, and says the equipment was purchased for other purposes.

Rice said Friday that North Korea should not only disclose its nuclear weapons programs.

“We need a complete declaration from the North Koreans about both their proliferation activities, their current plutonium program — which they are in the process of disabling, but also the HEU (highly enriched uranium) program, that they need to make clear what has happened there,” she said.

The six-party talks, which began in 2003, group the two Koreas, the United States, China, Russia and Japan.

Under a deal reached in February 2007, the North was to receive one million tonnes of fuel oil or equivalent energy aid in return for disablement and a declaration.

The aid has been only partially delivered. The North also complains that Washington is dragging its feet on a pledge to start the process to remove it from a list of state sponsors of terrorism.

South Korea’s new president Lee has promised a firmer line with North Korea, which staged a nuclear test in October 2006, linking Seoul’s aid more closely to disarmament.

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