HANOI, Vietnam - New disarmament talks with North Korea should wait until it is clear the North is ready to deal, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday.

"I think it doesn"t make sense for us to have talks unless we think that it"s going to be fruitful," Rice told reporters traveling with her at a Pacific Rim economic forum. "It certainly doesn"t make sense to go back just to talk."

Rice sounded cautious about North Korean motives in agreeing to return to six-nation talks Pyongyang has boycotted for a year. The North carried out a nuclear test last month, unnerving the world and upping the ante in the country"s traditional brinksmanship to gain aid and security guarantees.

"I do think that after having set off a nuclear test that the North Koreans need to do something to demonstrate that they actually are committed to denuclearization that goes beyond words," Rice said. "Because after having set off a nuclear test there"s some skepticism about that."

The United States, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia have offered impoverished North Korea a package of economic, political and energy incentives if it gives up its nuclear weapons. The North agreed to the vaguely worded deal in September 2005, but backed away before any hard details were worked out.

The skepticism Rice said she heard from other foreign ministers Thursday arises from worries that the North does not intend to give up its weapons, or might do so only with sweeter incentives than those now on the table. Diplomats say the North"s agreement to return to talks may be a tactic to roll back sanctions the United Nations applied days after the Oct. 9 explosion.

The international effort to counter North Korea"s nuclear threat is high on the agenda of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, which President Bush joins Friday. The Bush administration is seeking a tough line with Pyongyang after its nuclear test.

The United States is also pressing for harsher U.N. Security Council penalties for Iran, which stands accused of secretly trying to build nuclear weapons. Russia and China, also attending the APEC summit, have agreed in principle to apply U.N. sanctions on oil-rich Iran, but Russia wants only lenient measures as a first step, and U.N. talks have bogged down.

"There is willingness to have a Security Council resolution," Rice said. "The question is what is that resolutions going to say, and how broad is it going to be."