Washington: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has ruled out visiting North Korea during her Asia tour next week, saying such a visit would "not be useful at this time."

Rice was scheduled to visit Seoul, Beijing and Tokyo next week as part of six-country negotiations aimed at scrapping North Korea s nuclear weapons.

"I don t plan to, I just don t think it s something useful at this time or that it s warranted," she told reporters yesterday, when asked if she could visit the North Korean capital Pyongyang.

She said that Christopher Hill, her top nuclear envoy, has had "those contacts and he ll continue to have them" with the North Korean officials by meeting them in various places, including in Pyongyang.

"I think everybody knows what needs to happen here," she said.

North Korea, which staged its first nuclear test in October 2006,later agreed to return to six-party negotiations grouping the two Koreas, the United States, China, Russia and Japan.

A landmark deal reached on February 13 last year offers the North a million tons of fuel oil, normalized ties with the United States and Japan and a formal peace treaty, if it scraps all nuclear programmes and material.

In the current phase the North agreed to disable its atomic plants and fully declare all nuclear programs by the end of last year. But it missed the deadline amid a dispute with the US over the declaration.

Pyongyang says it submitted a list in November.

Source : PTI