BEIJING 

 US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday urged China to use all its influence with North Korea to ensure the reclusive Stalinist state moved ahead quickly with nuclear disarmament;-With the clock running down on the Bush administration, Rice used her meetings with the Chinese leadership to call for a renewed push to end a two-month impasse with North Korea over its denuclearisation.

“I’m expecting from China what I’m expecting from others – that we will use all influence possible with the North Koreans to convince them that it’s time to move forward,” Rice said after meeting Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi.

“We are at the cusp of something very special here. Now is the time to move on, time to continue the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula, which is in everyone’s interest.”

China chairs the six-country talks that are aimed at ending North Korea’s nuclear programmes. The other members of the forum are the United States, the two Koreas, Japan and Russia.

China is regarded as having the most influence with the leadership in Pyongyang because it is the North’s closest political ally and one of its most important trading partners.

A landmark six-nation deal reached in February last year offered the North a million tonnes of fuel oil, normalised ties with the United States and Japan and a formal peace treaty, if it scrapped all nuclear programmes and material. In the current phase, the North agreed to disable its atomic plants and fully declare all nuclear programmes by the end of last year. But it missed the deadline amid a dispute with the United States over the declaration.

The United States believes the North has still not given a full account of its nuclear activities, with particular concern over a suspected highly enriched uranium project.

Washington also has suspicions North Korea has transferred nuclear technology to Syria and other countries.

The North, meanwhile, has accused the United States of bad faith in the disarmament process. It has received only part of the one million tonnes of fuel oil or equivalent energy aid and complains Washington is dragging its feet on a pledge to start the process to remove it from a list of state sponsors of terrorism;-Rice insisted the United States would keep its commitments made in the six-party process, as long as North Korea did. Yang sought to highlight “important progress” that had already been made in the six-party process, despite the current delays, while saying that China was in close talks with the North Korean government.

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