WASHINGTON, Jan 18 (AFP) - US secretary of state-designate Condoleezza Rice urged Tuesday united world action to keep Iran and North Korea from building nuclear weapons, but offered no new proposals to rein in the truculent regimes.
"We must remain united in insisting that Iran and North Korea abandon their nuclear weapons ambitions, and choose instead the path of peace," Rice said in an opening statement at her confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Under questioning, Rice could do no more than express hope that Washington's current policies of relying on European mediation with Iran and six-party talks with North Korea would eventually bear fruit.
Rice reacted cautiously to reports that the North Koreans were ready to rejoin negotiations with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States, which collapsed last year.
"We've heard nothing really from North Korea," the outgoing national security adviser said. "And I hope that they will actually act because we found that their words are not always completely reliable."
North Korea had been pressing for direct discussions with the Americans. But Rice told the senators that the administration of President George W. Bush was committed to a multilateral approach.
"Our goal now has to be to make the six-party mechanism work for dealing with the North Korean nuclear program and then hopefully for dealing with the broader problem of managing this dangerous regime," she said.
To questioning by Senator John Kerry, who had pressed for bilateral talks with North Korea during his failed campaign against Bush in the presidential elections in November, Rice said the United States "still had room for a diplomatic solution" to the nuclear crisis.
She said the six-party talks enabled all of North Korea's neighbours to "work together on a serious security problem."
Concerning Iran, which has been under US sanctions dating back to 1979, Rice acknowledged that Washington had little leverage but was working with Britain, France and Germany to develop a strategy to hold Tehran accountable.
"I would take, as a first step, that if the Iranians do not show that they're going to live up to their international obligations that we refer them to the Security Council," she said, adding that "at some point that may be exactly where we need to go."
What Washington is saying is, "Iran has to be held to account for its international obligations," she added.
The US goal "is to have a regime in Iran that is responsive to concerns that we have about Iran's policies, which are 180 degrees to our own interest at this point," she said.
"That means the regime would have to deal with its nuclear weapons obligations, deal with the fact that there are Al-Qaeda (terrorist network) leaders who have been there, deal with the fact that they're supporting (Lebanon's Shiite Muslim fundamentalist militia) Hezbollah and terrorism and Palestinian rejectionists against the Middle East peace process," she said.
Rice, however, praised the Iranian people, whom, she said "suffer under a regime that has been completely unwilling to deal with their aspirations and that has an appalling human rights record."
Concerning Tehran's nuclear aspirations, Rice said, "The world is sending a message to Iran that Iran cannot be a legitimate participant in the international system, international politics and pursue a nuclear weapon."
01/19/2005 03:06 GMT - AFP