One stop not on Rice's North Asia trip Pyongyang

WASHINGTON, Oct 17 (Reuters) At each stop on a high profile visit to Asia and Russia this week, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will talk about North Korea's nuclear program, but Pyongyang itself will get the silent treatment.

During a brief thaw in relations in 2000, then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright went to North Korea and met the reclusive state's leader Kim Jong-il, giving him a basketball signed by star Michael Jordan.

There will be no such ceremony on this trip.

Except for Pyongyang, Rice, who leaves today, will meet all of the players involved in negotiating with North Korea in moribund six-party talks -- making stops in Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing and Moscow.

The two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States are involved in the talks, which have been stalled for a year because of financial restrictions imposed on North Korea by Washington.

The United States, from the president down, argues that the six-party format is the right one and that bilateral talks outside of this framework would reward North Korea for its bad behavior, particularly after last week's nuclear test.

While pushing ahead with an isolation strategy on Iran and North Korea, the Bush administration is coming under growing pressure to talk to its enemies.

Even some of President George W. Bush's closest advisers, including a Republican former secretary of state, James Baker, have said Washington should reconsider its policy. ''It is not appeasement to talk to your enemies,'' Baker said in an interview this month with ABC.

Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a key Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, echoed Baker's views.

''We are the adult power in the world,'' he told CNN. ''We always must engage our enemies, because that is the only sure way to drive toward the core of a resolution'' to the North Korean crisis.

NOT ELVIS PRESLEY North Korea expert Daniel Pinkston said he did not understand the logic that by talking to North Korea, the United States somehow weakened its hand.

''Unless you are Elvis Presley granting an audience I don't think this should be seen as a reward,'' said Pinkston, a proliferation expert with the California-based Center for Nonproliferation Studies.

''I would think that would give some confidence that the United States would be magnanimous and show flexibility as others have asked them to do.'' Russia and China have backed direct talks between Washington and Pyongyang and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan last week urged the United States to deal directly with North Korea.

''There is a suggestion that there should be more milk and cookies (for North Korea by having direct talks). We are going to do what we think is right and effective,'' State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

From a negotiating standpoint, McCormack said, the United States was in a stronger position if it was at the table with others in the six-party process.

Former US ambassador to China, Winston Lord, agreed with the administration's stand.

''I am absolutely 100 per cent against bilateral talks with the North Koreans outside of the six-party framework. These other countries have as much interest as we do. There is no way to persuade North Korea to make a deal unless you have the pressure and the incentives that several countries can give,'' said Lord.

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