With President George W. Bush due to leave office in six months, Rice is looking for a diplomatic success despite criticism from once-dominant hardliners who had pressed the US administration to isolate North Korea.

Rice will fly to Japan on June 26 for the Group of Eight (G8) foreign ministers meeting before heading to South Korea on June 28 and China on June 29, Rice's deputy spokesman Tom Casey told reporters.

She heads back to Washington from China on June 30.

Though she will tackle a range of topics, Rice will discuss the "six-party" North Korea negotiations not only in Seoul and Beijing but also in Kyoto, where she will also hold bilateral talks with Japanese officials, Casey said.

China chairs the nuclear disarmament negotiations that involve the United States, China, Russia, and Japan as well as South and North Korea.

During a tour of Seoul, Beijing and Tokyo in February that also focused on North Korea, Rice urged China to use all its influence with Pyongyang to ensure the reclusive Stalinist state moved ahead quickly with nuclear disarmament.

Since then, there have been a flurry of meetings across the globe involving top US envoys Christopher Hill and Sung Kim with their six-country counterparts that have produced tangible if not belated signs of progress.

In May, North Korea handed Kim more than 18,000 pages of documents that will help US and other experts verify a long-awaited declaration from Pyongyang on its past nuclear activities.

North Korea, which staged a nuclear test in October 2006, is disabling its plutonium-producing reactor and other plants under a six-party deal reached last year.

But disputes over the promised declaration due December 31 have blocked the start of the final phase of the process -- the permanent dismantling of the plants and the handover of all material.

In return for abandoning the atomic programs, the North would receive energy aid, a lifting of US sanctions, the establishment of diplomatic relations with Washington and a formal peace treaty.

North Korea also missed an end-of-year deadline to completely disable its nuclear plants.

During a speech in Washington on Wednesday, Rice said "North Korea will soon give its nuclear declaration to China."

After the declaration, Bush would formally inform Congress of plans to remove North Korea from a list of state sponsors of terrorism and waive penalizing the regime under the US Trading with the Enemy Act, Rice said.

Casey said he could not say exactly what "soon" meant but behind her remarks is "an increasing confidence that we are getting to the end of this particular phase."

Nevertheless, he injected a note of caution by saying: "One has to remain fairly skeptical in this process as we move forward."

When asked about a reported invitation for Rice to visit North Korea, Casey replied: "I have absolutely no idea, but she's not planning on going to North Korea."

Rice's tour of the region -- which follows her participation in a conference in Berlin aimed at bolstering Palestinian civil security and the rule of law -- will touch on a number of other issues.

During the meeting in Kyoto, Rice and her counterparts from Canada, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Russia will discuss preparations for the G8 summit in July which Tokyo hopes will focus on combating global poverty.

During her talks in Seoul, Rice is also likely to discuss US beef exports to South Korea, which have sparked massive street protests and forced President Lee Myung-Bak to apologize twice to South Koreans worried about mad cow disease.

And in China, Rice will become the highest-ranking US official to visit Chengdu, an area ravaged by a massive earthquake on May 12, Casey said. She will meet Chinese officials and relief workers while offering sympathy and support.

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