U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday said that the U.S. is not prepared to expand relations with North Korea until its leadership has fully shut down its nuclear weapons program. North Korea and Iran are "clearly still states about which there are significant proliferation concerns," she said.

North Korea "is not a regime that the United States is prepared to engage broadly," Rice said in an interview with the Associated Press. The remarks were Rice's strongest criticisms of the North since Pyongyang agreed on Oct. 3 to disable all of its nuclear facilities by the end of the year.

Rice appeared to be clarifying the Bush administration's intentions lest North Korea misinterpret recent signs that U.S. ties with the communist state have been warming, experts believe. Observers in Seoul and Washington have said that the U.S. seems to be changing its policy on North Korea, as evidenced by a personal letter from U.S. President George W. Bush to North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and a planned performance by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in Pyongyang in February.

In the interview, Rice said that the letter and the planned concert don't signify any softening in the administration's basic stance toward North Korea, a country the White House lumped with Iran and Iraq in an "axis of evil." Bush's letter, she said, was part of the "active diplomacy" to resolve the North Korean nuclear problem. The U.S. has maintained that cultural and sports exchanges with North Korea should be separated from the issue of normalizing bilateral relations.

Rice made it clear that the normalization of relations between Washington and Pyongyang must be preceded by full denuclearization, including the disclosure of all nuclear programs -- an issue North Korea has been hesitant about. Rice reportedly began preparing this hard-line position after she was briefed by chief U.S. negotiator in nuclear talks Christopher Hill who visited Pyongyang early this month. Hill reportedly told Rice that North Korea was dragging its feet on declaring its nuclear programs. North Korea has continually denied the existence of a program to produce highly enriched uranium, an issue that sparked the second North Korean nuclear crisis in October 2002.

Rice apparently was using the interview to urge North Korea to get moving on pending issues by clarifying the administration's position on the disablement of North Korea's nuclear facilities, the removal of it from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, and the lifting of sanctions imposed under the U.S. Trading with the Enemy Act.

While Rice was directing her comments at North Korea, they may also have been intended as an indirect message to the Roh Moo-hyun administration, which has been pressing for a declaration to end the Korean War and a summit of the concerned nations before the dismantlement of North Korea's nuclear program is complete.

The U.S. has stated several times that it would be impossible normalize relations with the North, or to sign a declaration to end the war, before denuclearization is complete. But the Roh administration has continued to push the U.S. for the declaration and has acted as if a peace treaty were a done deal.

(englishnews@chosun.com )