The remarks came when Rice met with South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon in Seoul on the final leg of her Asian tour which also brought her to Japan and China, they said.

"North Korea will be surprised to see how much will be possible (if it abandons its nuclear programs)," Rice told Ban, according to official Kim Eun-Seok, who attended the 30-minute meeting.

"So much is possible if North Korea just does that."

Rice expressed hope that North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il will follow the footsteps of his counterpart of Libya, a former US enemy which has normalized ties with Washington after giving up its nuclear ambitions.

"I wish Kim Jong-Il would talk to (Libyan leader Moamar) Kadhafi," Rice was quoted by Kim Eun-Seok as saying.

A nuclear stand-off erupted in October 2002 when the United States said North Korea acknowledged it was developing nuclear weapons, violating a 1994 international agreement.

The third round of six-way nuclear crisis talks in Beijing last month ended without a breakthrough, although the United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia agreed to meet again by the end of September.

Pyongyang has proposed freezing its nuclear program and pledged to stop building, testing and transferring nuclear weapons, but insisted Washington's rewards for concessions were the only way to resolve the impasse.

The United Sates offered at the latest negotiations economic and diplomatic rewards if North Korea shut down and sealed its nuclear weapons facilities in three months.

North Korea has demanded energy aid and a security guarantee from the United States. Pyongyang also wants Washington to lift sanctions on North Korea and remove the Stalinist regime from the US list of states sponsoring terrorism.

While meeting with Ban, Rice also thanked South Korea for sending troops to Iraq at the US' request, officials said.

Earlier in the day, Rice met with South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun and conveyed US President George W. Bush's letter to the South Korean leader.

"President Bush wanted me to visit Seoul and reaffirm the importance the United States attaches to its relations with the Republic of Korea," Rice was quoted as saying in the pool report.

The letter is expected to contain Bush's thanks for Seoul's decision to deploy more than 3,000 troops to Iraq, an aide to Roh was quoted as saying by Yonhap news agency.

A group of some 60 activists rallied on a road leading to the presidential Blue House, chanting slogans denouncing the US-led war on Iraq as Rice was meeting with Roh.

Rice also met with her South Korean counterpart, Kwon Jin-Ho, to discuss Washington's plan to realign its troops stationed overseas, officials said.

Washington has offered to reduce its 37,500 US troops in South Korea by one third under a global redeployment plan.

The US military presence has served as key deterrence against North Korea since the 1950-1953 Korean War, and the planned reduction has prompted security concerns among South Koreans.

Rice headed back home after a meeting with Ban late Friday, said US embassy spokesman Jason Rebholz in Seoul.

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