Rice weighs carrots and sticks on North Korea proliferation

By Arshad Mohammed

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Friday she would explore how to use a mix of carrots and sticks to address North Korea's nuclear program and proliferation during a visit to Asia next week.

Rice will attend Monday's inauguration of South Korean President-elect Lee Myung-bak and then visit Beijing and Tokyo to discuss how to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear programs before the window closes on the Bush administration.

President George W. Bush has less than a year left to wean North Korea of its nuclear ambitions in exchange for economic and diplomatic benefits under a 2005 deal in which Pyongyang agreed to abandon all of its nuclear weapons and programs.

At the top of Rice's agenda will be reviving the six-party agreement under which North Korea has begun to dismantle key nuclear facilities at Yongbyon but has balked at providing a complete declaration of all of its nuclear programs.

The agreement was hammered out among the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States.

"We have the right group of countries at that table with the right set of incentives and disincentives to address not just denuclearization, which obviously is extremely important, but also proliferation," Rice told a news conference.

"I'll be carrying that message and discussing that with our partners."

Making her first trip to Northeast Asia in over a year, Rice has no plans to see any North Koreans or visit Pyongyang, where the New York Philharmonic will play a concert featuring the works of Antonin Dvorak and George Gershwin on Tuesday.