Rice says North Korea, Iran are still nuclear hazards

WASHINGTON — North Korea and Iran have a long way to go to get off the Bush administration's list of nuclear threats, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

In light of last week's retrenchment of U.S. claims that Iran is now seeking an atomic weapon and word of new diplomatic and cultural outreach to North Korea, Rice was asked whether the United States still considers those nations part of President Bush's post-Sept. 11 "axis of evil."

"They are clearly still states about which there are significant proliferation concerns," Rice said during an interview at her State Department office. "It would be very irresponsible not to deal with those dangers."

During the wide-ranging interview, Rice took responsibility for the Blackwater Worldwide debacle. "Of course, anything that happens in this department, I'm ultimately responsible," she said.

She would not comment on the specifics of the September killing of 17 Iraqi civilians by private Blackwater security guards working for the State Department. That was the largest of several black marks on Rice's leadership over the past year.

Rice said she believed her staff and the Pentagon had developed adequate rules for contractors to prevent a repeat of the incident, which led the department's diplomatic security chief to resign.

On North Korea, Rice was cautious. She spoke a day after the New York Philharmonic announced it would play a concert in the North Korean capital and a week after word of a personal letter from President Bush to the leader of the communist nation, Kim Jong Il.

"This is not a regime that the United States is prepared to engage broadly" until the North has completely scrapped its nuclear weapons program, Rice said. "If we are going to engage it broadly, it's clear in the program that we have laid out how that would happen, after denuclearization."

The closed, secretive country exploded a nuclear device last year but agreed months later to accept economic and energy incentives if it gave up its weapons.

North Korea shut down its main nuclear reactor and has begun to put it out of commission; U.S. officials have said the work is going well. It is supposed to be complete by year's end.

Rice said neither the orchestra's upcoming trip, which the State Department helped arrange, nor Bush's letter should indicate an easing in the administration's resolve to confront North Korea.