The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) should be willing to return to the six- party talks and must also dismantle its nuclear weapons program, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said at a briefing on Thursday.

"It is not enough to just to return to the talks. You have to be willing to come back and talk about what the talks are about, and that is, the dismantling of the North Korean nuclear program," Rice said.

"The five parties remain committed and remain consistently committed to a non-nuclear Korean peninsula, to a message to the North Koreans that they cannot have a nuclear weapon and have integration into the international system. And that has got to continue to be the message," Rice said.

Rice said that the ball is now in the court of the DPRK but she declined to speculate about what the United States might do "under different circumstances."

The six-party talks, hosted by China, were stalled in June last year as the DPRK says the Bush administration was pursuing a hostile policy towards Pyongyang.

Source: Xinhua