In unveiling the foreign policy priorities for President Bush's second term, Secretary of State designate Condoleezza Rice offered no carrot to underscore Washington's seriousness for a quick resolution to the nuclear crisis engulfing the Korean peninsula.

In fact, Rice branded North Korea an "outpost of tyranny," a remark that may earn the ire of Pyongyang, which two years ago fumed when Bush tagged it part of an "Axis of Evil" together with Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Iran.

Rice, in pre-confirmation testimonies this week before a Senate panel, did not show any flexibility in Washington's position in six-nation talks aimed at prodding North Korea to give up its nuclear ambitions.

In a surprise move, North Korea offered last week to resume the China-hosted discussions if Bush, who officially starts his second term Thursday, toned down his rhetoric and formulated a friendlier policy towards it.

But a day later, Pyongyang returned to its traditional anti-American rhetoric and accused the United States of being a "nuclear criminal" with double standards.

The reclusive state has attended three rounds of inconclusive discussions on the nuclear stand-off and had shunned a fourth round originally scheduled for last September, complaining of "hostile" US policies.

"As we move into Bush's second term, I don't see any reason for optimism that there will be a change of course in the US position on North Korea in any significant way," said Fred Carriere, executive director of The Korea Society, based in New York.

One reason for his pessimism is Washington's unrelenting stand on Iran over accusations it is running a nuclear weapons program.

"Despite pressure from the European allies, who have bigger clout and are pressing the US for a negotiated diplomatic solution over Iran, the Bush administration is remarkably resistant to these efforts," Carriere noted.

"So, I don't see how they will be flexible with North Korea," he said.

Bush said Monday he could not rule out resorting to military action if Iran could not be persuaded to abandon a nuclear energy programme which Washington believes is a cover for developing a nuclear bomb.

Iran vehemently denies that it is developing nuclear weapons.

The United States is unlikely to achieve any breakthrough in talks with North Korea unless it joins the other four parties in talks with Pyongyang -- Russia, Japan, South Korea and China -- in offering energy aid to the cash-starved state, an Asian diplomat said. "This will underline sincerity."

The United States could also show sincerity by softening its demand for a full disclosure of North Korea's nuclear programs.

The nuclear stand-off with Pyongyang flared in October 2002 when the United States accused it of operating a nuclear weapons program based on highly enriched uranium (HEU), violating a 1994 agreement.

Pyongyang has denied running the uranium-based program but has restarted its plutonium program.

"It is high time for the United States to switch course and deal with North Korea's plutonium first," said Selig Harrison, chairman of the task force on US-Korea policy at the US Center for International Policy.

Only when tensions ease with Pyongyang, through step-by-step mutual concessions, is the full truth about its uranium capabilities likely to be known, and "only then can definitive action be taken to put the North Korean nuclear genie back in the bottle," he said.

Harrison charged in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs magazine that the Bush administration had "seriously exaggerated" the danger that Pyongyang was secretly making uranium-based nuclear weapons.

It "distorted its intelligence on North Korea (much as it did on Iraq)," he said.

US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher stressed that any discussions on the nuclear crisis must address the "full range" of North Korea's atomic programs, including uranium enrichment plans. "The goal is to make real progress," he said.

The conservative Heritage Foundation, a influential think tank in Bush's Republican Party policies, also said any preconditions for reduction of tensions with North Korea must include a "complete, irreversible, and verifiable dismantlement" of its nuclear weapons program.

Only after North Korea completely dismantles its nuclear program should the United States move to ease its political and economic isolation, the think tank said in a "Mandate for Leadership" report ahead of Bush's second term.

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