NEW YORK, Sept 23: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Sunday it was “very important” for North Korea to be fully transparent about its nuclear weapons programme amid reports it has atomic links with Syria.

“There are frankly a lot of questions that remain to be answered and we want to be able to answer questions about all aspects of the North Korean nuclear programme,” she told reporters with her Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi beside her, ahead of their talks on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

“So that’s very important,” she said ahead of a crucial round of six-party talks among the United States, China, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas beginning on Wednesday in Beijing aimed at ending Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program.

Rice did not cite the reported North Korean-Syrian links. If true, they could cast a dark cloud over US policy towards North Korea, which US President George W. Bush, weighed down by the unpopular war in Iraq, has hailed as a success.

US and British newspapers have reported recently that North Korea was secretly helping Syria to develop a nuclear weapons facility.

Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper reported that elite Israeli forces seized North Korean nuclear material during a raid on a secret military site in Syria before Israeli warplanes bombed it Sept 6.

Quoting well-placed sources, it said the commandos seized the material from a compound near Dayr az-Zwar in northern Syria and added that tests of it in Israel showed it was of North Korean origin.

Despite the apparent nuclear proliferation concerns, Rice noted progress in the six-party talks based on a Feb 13 agreement under which North Korea agreed to end its nuclear weapons program in return for energy aid and diplomatic and security guarantees.

In July, North Korea shut down a key nuclear reactor at Yongbyon in return for 50,000 tons of fuel oil under the first phase of the agreement’s implementation.

Experts from nuclear weapon states the United States, China and Russia visited the Yongbyon complex in preparation for the meeting this week, at which representatives are expected to work on setting a firm deadline for the permanent disabling of the North’s nuclear facilities.

Rice said Pyongyang had provided “very good access” to the experts.

US top nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill had said that participants in the six-party talks would also seek to devise and adopt a “work plan” for Pyongyang to declare and disable its entire nuclear arsenal.

Negotiators are also expected to set a date for the first meeting of foreign ministers from the six nations involved in the nuclear talks, which was given new urgency when North Korea tested a nuclear device last year.

Yang said he looked forward to “in-depth discussion” with Rice, saying they “need to work very hard” on various agreements reached between Bush and his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao at their last meeting on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum summit recently in Sydney.—AFP