Rice, on her first Asian tour since taking office in January, was scheduled to meet with with President Roh Moo-Hyun, Unification Minister Chung Dong-Young and Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon on Sunday.

Her arrival coincided with the start Saturday of massive annual US-South Korea military exercises that North Korea said were aimed at a preemptive strike, justifying the bolstering of its "self-defensive nuclear arsenal."

In Tokyo earlier Saturday, Rice told North Korea it must immediately return to stalled talks on its nuclear program.

She said North Korea could only realize its wishes for security assurances and aid if it ended its boycott of the six-nation talks.

"North Korea should return to the six-party talks immediately if it is serious about exploring the path forward that we and the other parties have proposed," Rice said in a speech at Sophia University in Tokyo.

"This is where the North Korean government can find the respect it desires and the assistance it needs if it is willing to make a strategic choice," she said.

Rice, who heads to Beijing Sunday to end her six-nation Asian tour, said China, Pyongyang's main ally, had a special responsibility to coax the reclusive regime back to the table.

"China has a particular opportunity and responsibility here and I will soon be discussing in Beijing how the United States and China can advance our common interests on this and others," Rice said.

North Korea, officially called the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), last took part in the talks in June 2004.

In February the communist state announced it was suspending the dialogue, demanding Rice apologize for calling it an "outpost of tyranny."

"It is quite illogical for the US to intend to negotiate with the DPRK without retracting its remarks that listed its dialogue partner as 'an outpost of tyranny,'" a foreign ministry spokesman said Wednesday.

But Rice has refused to apologize. In Islamabad on Thursday she accused North Korea of focusing on the label to avoid discussing its nuclear program and reiterated that United States had no intention of attacking the country.

Rice's inclusion of three of the countries involved in the talks -- China, Japan and South Korea -- was aimed at mounting international pressure on the North, although this had not worked previously, said analyst Paik Hak-Soon of the Sejong Institute here.

"The Bush administration's policy toward North Korea has been based on an assumption that North Korea would give in to coordinated international pressure and give up its nuclear programs," Paik said.

"But this assumption has so far proved wrong as North Korea has moved to the other direction and promulgated its possesion of nuclear weapons," Paik said.

He said Pyongyang would find it hard to return to dialogue unless it were assured that the US government only wanted to stem the proliferation of nuclear weapons and not to bring about a regime change in the communist state.

Rice arrived as US and South Korean troops started week-long annual military exercises that the United States says were "defense oriented" and designed to improve the ability of allied forces to defend South Korea against external aggression.

Some 17,000 US troops, 6,000 of them stationed in South Korea, were taking part in the exercise with an unspecified number of South Korean troops, a US military spokesman said.

North Korea reacted nervously. "The projected exercises are extremely dangerous nuclear war drills to mount a preemptive attack on the DPRK," the official Korean Central News Agency said on Friday.

It said North Korea will take "all the necessary countermeasures including the increase of its nuclear arsenal" to cope with the "extremely hostile attempt of the US to bring down" its system.

"The reality goes to prove that it is very just for the DPRK to have opted for bolstering its self-defensive nuclear arsenal in order to protect the peace of the country and the fate of the nation from the US moves for aggression...," it said.

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