Sunday, March 20 2005 10:22 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Seoul: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice today (Mar 20, 2005) said that Washington had no intention of attacking North Korea, and urged the communist State to drop its nuclear weapons ambitions.

"We have absolutely no desire to attack North Korea," Rice said in a round-table discussion with Internet-based South Korean journalists, which was broadcast live by Internet Portal Media Daum.

"We understand that North Korea is a Sovereign State ... North Korea does not need to worry the United States intends to attack it," she said.

The US Secretary of State urged North Korea to make a "strategic choice" to abandon its nuclear ambitions and return to six-nation nuclear talks.

"They need to come and say we have decided that our interests, North Koreans' interests, are best served by an end to a nuclear weapons programme," she said.

Rice arrived in South Korea from Japan yesterday (Mar 19, 2005) as a part of her six-nation tour of Asia, with her agenda in Seoul focussing on bringing defiant North Korea back to the dialogue table.

She meets South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun, Unification Minister Chung Dong-Young and Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon today.

Rice's meeting with Internet-based journalists at a Seoul hotel was disrupted by a lone protestor opposed to North Korea's Stalinist regime.