By Arshad Mohammed Reuters Tuesday, February 26, 2008; 2:37 AM BEIJING (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged China on Tuesday to use its influence to press North Korea to make a full declaration of its nuclear programs so that a disarmament deal can move forward.
North Korea has promised to abandon all nuclear weapons programs in exchange for economic and diplomatic incentives under an agreement between the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States reached in Beijing in 2005.
However, the deal has been stymied by Pyongyang's failure to meet an end-2007 deadline to disclose its nuclear programs.
"I'm expecting from China what I am expecting from others -- that we will use all influence possible with the North Koreans to convey to them it's time to move forward," Rice told reporters.
"We are (on) the cusp of something very special here," she said, citing North Korea's decision to initially shut down the Yongbyon reactor at the heart of its atomic program. "Now it's time to move on."
A senior U.S. official said Rice hoped her Asian trip would act as "a real catalyst to get over this bar of a good declaration" and she particularly wanted help from China, North Korea's major trading partner and traditional Communist ally.
"We continue to believe that if anyone is capable of convincing the North that this kind of transparency is the only way forward, it's the Chinese," said the official, who spoke anonymously because of the sensitivity of the diplomacy.
Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said Beijing favored intensified diplomacy to overcome the latest setback in the long-running nuclear negotiations.
"The Chinese side hopes that the parties will treasure the results we have already produced, which have not come easily, and bear in mind the bigger picture and ... increase the dialogue and consultations among the parties...," Yang told reporters.
According to U.S. officials and analysts, the sticking point has been Pyongyang's reluctance to discuss any nuclear technology it may have transferred to other nations, notably Syria, as well as its suspected pursuit of uranium enrichment.
The United States has questions about any possible North Korean role in a suspected Syrian covert nuclear site that was bombed by Israel in September. Syria has denied having a nuclear program but the case remains murky.
RIGHTS DIALOGUE
In a concession possibly aimed defusing a barrage of international criticism surround China's hosting of the 2008 Olympics in August, Yang said China was willing to resume a human rights dialogue with the United States.
China broke off the dialogue in 2004 after Washington urged a U.N. watchdog to condemn what it called China's backsliding on rights.
Rice was due to meet Chinese President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao following her meeting with Yang, for talks that are likely also to touch on efforts to get a third U.N. Security Council resolution passed imposing sanctions on Iran for its nuclear program.
Rice, who attended South Korean President Lee Myung-bak's inauguration in Seoul on Monday, arrived in Beijing on Tuesday and flies to Tokyo on Wednesday.
She has no plans to visit Pyongyang, where the New York Philharmonic orchestra will play a concert featuring the works of Antonin Dvorak and George Gershwin on Tuesday.
Rice also plans to discuss how the six nations that reached the agreement on ending North Korea's nuclear ambitions might monitor it, including tracking whether North Korea proliferates nuclear technology in the future.
(Additional reporting by Lindsay Beck in Beijing; Editing by Nick Macfie/Sugita Katyal)
