Albright argues a "serious" North Korea policy would feature a willingness to talk one-on-one with the Stalinist state -- a step the current White House has fiercely opposed.

In excerpts from the book "Madam Secretary," to be carried in the September issue of Vanity Fair magazine, Albright also relates the inside story of her eye-popping visit to Pyongyang in October 2000 which stirred outrage from conservative critics.

Albright says that when she left office in January 2001, she was given the impression by Secretary of State Colin Powell that the new foreign policy team would explore what she said was a "diplomatic opening" her team crafted with Pyongyang.

"As he and the world learned, this wasn't to be the case," Albright writes, referring to the struggle for the soul of Korea policy which raged early in the Bush presidency.

Albright also holds forth on the train of events unleashed while the administration reviewed US policy towards Pyongyang, and the subsequent discovery of a banned North Korean nuclear weapons programs.

She says events have now turned full circle to duplicate a situation faced by Clinton in 1994, as North Korea is armed with nuclear bombs, searching for customers willing to pay for fissile material or weapons -- "all in all, a dangerous mess and a wholly unacceptable status quo."

North Korea last week agreed to join a six-nation dialogue on the crisis, but Bush has refused to contemplate the bilateral approach Albright advocates.

The Clinton administration fell short of concluding a deal with the Stalinist state on halting its missile sales, which was to have been clinched by a proposed trip to North Korea by the former president in the dying days of his mandate.

But Albright reveals in the book due out in September, that Clinton ran out of time to make the trip -- and instead chose to devote the final days of his time in the White House to a desperate bid to make peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

"Day by day, week by week, the White House delayed making a final decision because of the scheduling chaos created by crisis-driven negotiations on the Middle East," she writes.

In a final bid to forge a deal, the administration made the unusual step of inviting Kim to Washington -- but he refused to come, Albright wrote.

In the chapter on North Korea, entitled "At the door to the Hermit Kingdom" Albright also describes her meeting with reclusive Stalinist leader Kim Jong Il.

Kim "had a round face, wore large eyeglasses, and sported amazing puffed-up hair," and delighted at serving French wine at dinner, she writes.

Albright also relates the trip to a communist party pageant sprung upon her by Kim at which she saw around 100,000 performers perform synchronised dances in a chillingly nationalistic demonstration of the power of totalitarian rule.

She describes the exhibition at a stadium, which later exposed her to severe criticism from conservative critics back home, as "an Olympics opening ceremony on steroids."

WAR.WIRE