US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that the United States wants to see Asian nations get along peacefully and deal cooperatively with nuclear proliferation problem states like North Korea.

Rice said to Australian Prime Minister John Howard in Sydney that Washington wants "a region that is at peace" and in which the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is not a problem.

She stressed the need to be able to deal with states like North Korea, which is now clearly "outside its obligations to the NPT," the nuclear nonproliferation treaty.

The transcript of her remarks was posted on the State Department web site on Friday.

North Korea unilaterally left the NPT in January 2003 at the height of its confrontation with the U.S. over its suspected uranium-based nuclear weapons program.

Rice will hold multilateral talks with Australia and Japan in Sydney, where the North Korean nuclear problem may come up as a regional issue.