Rice accuses DPRK of using tyranny label to avoid nuke issue

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (L) and her Pakistani counterpart Khurshid Kasuri (R) head for a meeting in Islamabad Thursday. Rice said Washington was keen to ensure that the "tentacles" of a black market run by Pakistan's disgraced nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan were wiped out. PHOTO: AFP

Rice, who is on her first official tour of Asia -- much of it dedicated to trying to break a deadlock on the nuclear issue and draw the Stalinist regime back to multi-party talks -- refused to be back down over the name-calling.

"The North Koreans are determined to change the subject from what North Korea is doing, and we are not going to let them change the subject," Rice said in an interview with US television network ABC in Islamabad.

The reclusive regime said Wednesday it would not engage in fresh talks with the United States on its nuclear ambitions and lashed out at Rice, currently on a six-nation tour of Asia.

A foreign ministry spokesman said in a statement published by the North's official Korean Central News Agency that talks were inconceivable until Pyongyang was "delisted as 'an outpost of tyranny'."

Asked about the issue, Rice told reporters in the Pakistani capital: "I am not going to get into a debate on semantics with the North Koreans."

"Everybody knows what life looks like in North Korea and everybody knows what kind of system rules in North Korea and so as I said, I'm not going to let the North Koreans change the subject," she added.