Rice is due to visit South Korea -- where she will attend the inauguration of South Korean President-elect Lee Myung-Bak on Monday -- as well as China and Japan in the context of six-party negotiations to disarm North Korea.

US officials said Rice has no plans to visit North Korea, even if they added that a landmark, albeit privately-arranged concert that the New York Philharmonic plans to give the same week in Pyongyang could boost diplomacy.

"You know, sometimes the North Koreans don't like our words; maybe they'll like our music. So we'll see," US nuclear envoy Christopher Hill told reporters in Seoul Wednesday during his own tour to pave the way for Rice.

Analysts said they saw no public signs that Washington was closer to extracting a full and accurate declaration from the North Koreans on their nuclear activities, including a suspected uranium enrichment program.

Robert Einhorn, a former US government non-proliferation chief who worked on the North Korean nuclear issue, told AFP it appeared that Washington had no indication that North Korea would reveal more about these activities.

Without such an indication, the United States was reluctant to work out a "sequence" whereby North Korea would receive accelerated deliveries of fuel oil and be removed from a US list of state sponsors of terrorism, he said.

"If the US and if Chris Hill hasn't heard more than that privately, then it is hard to see at this stage how they're going to reach any breakthroughs during the secretary's visit," Einhorn said.

Great strides have been taken since President George W. Bush rejected a diplomatic solution and branded North Korea as part of the "axis of evil" with Iran and Iraq.

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 programs 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.

Charles Ferguson, a non-proliferation expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, agreed with Einhorn that chances of a breakthrough were slim, partly because the North Koreans were painfully slow negotiators.

On Rice's visit to Tokyo, he added, the Japanese could push for more clarity on the "sore issue" of a dozen or so Japanese nationals who were adbucted by North Korea decades ago, which are a part of the talks with Pyongyang.

"It's taken a bit of a back burner in Japan, but it can flare up," Ferguson told AFP.

Rice's trip appears all the more important as Hill acknowledged that "we're very short of time" after he arrived in South Korea on Tuesday from a trip to China where he met his North Korean counterpart, Kim Kye-gwan.

He wants results before Bush leaves office in January next year.

But Hill, who will join Rice on her tour, added that neither he nor Kim believed the problem over the declaration amounts to a stalemate, with the US diplomat calling it instead a "rough patch."

Einhorn said Rice's tour would at the least boost six-party coordination, adding that her meetings with the new government in Seoul could improve the strained ties of the past and ultimately benefit the talks on North Korea.

"I think expectations are very high for an improved relationship between Washington and Seoul," he added.

Though not connected to the North Korean issue, Rice will likely face the fallout over the alleged rape of a 14-year-old girl by a US Marine in Okinawa, as the massive US military presence in the country wears thin.

earlier related report
Nuclear negotiators from two Koreas meet in Beijing
Chief negotiators from South and North Korea met Thursday in Beijing to discuss ways of resuming stalled talks on the North's nuclear disarmament, the foreign ministry in Seoul said.

The South's Chun Yung-Woo flew to the Chinese capital Wednesday to meet Kim Kye-Gwan, his counterpart from the communist state.

"The meeting... is aimed at discussing the North Korean nuclear issue including a declaration (of its nuclear programmes)," a spokesman said.

Diplomatic activity aimed at ending the impasse in the six-party talks is intensifying.

US chief negotiator Christopher Hill visited Beijing this week and held talks there with Kim, before flying on to Seoul and Tokyo for further consultations.

He is preparing for a regional visit next week by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, which will also focus largely on the nuclear issue.

Hill said Wednesday in Tokyo that Kim had assured him the North is still committed to carrying out its part of a nuclear disarmament deal.

Under the current stage of the accord, the North was supposed by last December to have disabled its main plutonium-producing atomic plants and to have declared all nuclear programmes.

But the declaration is being held up by disagreements over what it should include. The United States says the reclusive regime must fully answer suspicions that it bought equipment for a covert uranium enrichment bomb-making programme.

The North denies such a programme and says the equipment was bought for other purposes.

The six-party talks, which began in 2003, group the two Koreas, the United States, China, Russia and Japan.

Under a deal reached in February 2007, the North was to receive one million tonnes of fuel oil or equivalent energy aid in return for disablement and a declaration.

The aid has been only partially delivered, while the North also complains that Washington is dragging its feet on a pledge to start removing it from a list of state sponsors of terrorism.

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