SHANNON: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said North Korea would receive a "very strong message" about its nuclear disarmament obligations at six-party talks this week in Singapore.

Flying to Asia via the Middle East on Monday, Rice lowered expectations for her first meeting with North Korean Foreign Minister Pak Ui-chun at informal talks with their counterparts from South Korea, China, Japan and Russia.

"I wouldn't call it (the meeting) either historic, monumental or even consequential. I think it's really in the consultation category," Rice told reporters accompanying her to Abu Dhabi from Washington.

But she said the gathering Wednesday on the sidelines of meetings of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) would serve to review progress in the negotiations for scrapping North Korea's nuclear weapons programs.

"I believe there will be a very strong message that the obligations need to be met and the verification protocol really needs to be completed," Rice said.

Six-party negotiations have now begun with North Korea on arrangements for verifying the steps toward disarmament taken until now.

Last month North Korea paved the way for the third and final phase of disarmament when it issued a long-delayed partial accounting of its nuclear programmes and promised to finish disabling its plutonium reactor by October.

Though it had originally been due at the end of last year, the declaration was part of a landmark disarmament accord agreed in the six-party forum in February last year.

Rice said "it has to be a verification protocol that can give us confidence that we're able to verify the accuracy of the North Korean declaration," which listed North Korean plutonium production.

The protocol must also offer "a way to address proliferation as well as all nuclear programmes as well as highly enriched uranium," Rice added.

The declaration acknowledged US concerns without addressing accusations that North Korea supplied Syria with the know-how to build a nuclear reactor on a site bombed by Israel last year.

It also omitted to address US suspicions of a covert uranium enrichment programme.

The declaration was a key part of the so-called "second phase" of the agreement, with the first phase seeing North Korea shut down its main plutonium-producing reactor at Yongbyon in July.

It then began disabling the plant under the supervision of US inspectors in November, and last month blew up the cooling tower at Yongbyon in a gesture intended to demonstrate its commitment to disarmament.

The Yongbyon plant was the source of the material the North used to conduct its first atomic test in 2006, an event that saw the United States soften its hardline stance against Pyongyang and begin offering incentives for disarmament.

The third and final phase of the disarmament deal calls for the North to permanently dismantle its atomic plants and hand over all nuclear material and weaponry.

In return, it would receive wide ranging energy aid benefits, as well as a restoration of diplomatic ties with the United States and Japan. Following the declaration, Washington began the process of removing North Korea from its blacklist of countries allegedly supporting terrorism.

Rice said the talks Wednesday in Singapore will also be a "useful opportunity" to discuss the third phase. "On the other hand we want to look forward," she added.

- AFP/yb