|PIC1|U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will push North Korea's foreign minister hard in their first ever meeting on Wednesday to prove the North's disarmament efforts are serious, U.S. officials said.

Rice is to join foreign ministers from China, Russia, Japan, and the two Koreas at Wednesday's meeting - the first such encounter since "six party" talks began in 2003 and at a time when Washington wants better ties with the North.

Rice will press Pak Ui-chun for details about a mechanism being worked out to check claims Pyongyang made about its weapons-grade plutonium stockpile in a long-delayed accounting delivered last month.

"It will give some indication of the amount of effort the North Koreans have put into the completing this verification protocol," chief U.S. negotiator Christopher Hill told reporters travelling with Rice.

Hill said a four-page draft of the so-called verification protocol had been circulated and he hoped there could be agreement on the issue by mid-August at the latest.

However, the verification procedure itself could take months to implement, possibly stretching into the next U.S. administration after Bush leaves office in January 2009.

Hill said the North Koreans had made some preliminary comments on the verification protocol and "indicated some problems with it." He did not elaborate.

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North Korean delegation spokesman Ri Dong-il told reporters

that North Korea's goal for Wednesday's meeting is to provide the "momentum to complete the second phase measures as agreed at the recent chief envoys' meeting in Beijing".

Verification is still the sticking point to complete that phase, Japan's Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura said.

"While the six-party talks came to an agreement on the framework of verification of the declaration of (North Korea's nuclear programmes, we have no prospect of the commencement of the verification itself," a Japanese official quoted Komura as telling China's Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi on Tuesday.

Hill said he would be in Vienna on Friday for talks with the International Atomic Energy Agency to discuss the role the U.N. nuclear watchdog could play in verifying the North's nuclear weapons program.

The North Korean spokesman said significant progress has been made, and Washington took steps to lift some of its sanctions against Pyongyang. "What's important is for the U.S. to fundamentally and entirely withdraw its hostile policy."

After North Korea presented the account of its nuclear weapons programme in June, a thaw of ties began with Bush launching a 45-day process to remove Pyongyang from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Wednesday's meeting, on the sidelines of annual talks among Asia-Pacific nations, comes at a time when the Bush administration is tweaking its policy towards North Korea.

President George W. Bush branded North Korea as part of an "axis of evil" together with Iraq and Iran after the September 11, 2001 attacks, but the North is slowly moving away from that rogue status and Washington has slightly eased some sanctions.

Rice said she would deliver a "strong message" to the North Korean minister. But she was at pains to play down the significance of the meeting, telling reporters she did not think they were "historic, or monumental or even consequential" and formal six-party ministerial would be held later in Beijing.

But with the unpopular Iraq war and the Iranian nuclear standoff unresolved, the Bush administration is hoping success in nuclear talks with North Korea will ultimately be logged as a foreign policy success when Bush leaves office.