Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday she expects North Korea to soon provide a long-overdue declaration of its nuclear activities as promised under a six-party deal.

"North Korea will soon give its declaration of nuclear programs to China," she said in a speech at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington.

Pyongyang's failure to give a credible account of its nuclear programs by the end-of-2007 deadline set by North and South Korea, the United States, China, Japan and Russia has held up progress in the six-party talks. China hosts the multilateral talks.

Once North Korea has submitted an acceptable declaration, President George W. Bush will notify Congress of his intent to cross North Korea off the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism and to lift sanctions under the U.S. Trading with the Enemy Act, Rice said.

"In the next 45 days after that, before those actions go into effect, we would continue to assess the level of North Korean cooperation in helping to verify the accuracy and completeness of its declaration. And if that cooperation is insufficient, we will respond accordingly" she said.

While Pyongyang's submission of a nuclear declaration could significantly move the stalled six-way process forward, removing North Korea from the terror blacklist would strain relations with Japan, a key U.S. ally.

Japan has urged the United States to refrain from taking North Korea off the list until progress is made on the decades-old issue of Pyongyang's abduction of Japanese nationals, which has prevented Japan and North Korea from normalizing bilateral ties.

Earlier in the day, top U.S. nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill expressed a strong desire that a six-party chief delegates' meeting on North Korea's nuclear programs will take place "as soon as possible."

The assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs said his journey to Japan and China this week is meant to "energize the six parties and try to set up a six-party meeting, probably a head-of-delegation meeting as soon as possible."

"My focus right now is on getting the six parties energized and ready to handle what I think will be some important weeks ahead," Hill said at an airport outside Washington just before his departure for his trip to Asia.

The U.S. envoy will arrive in Tokyo on Thursday for a meeting with his Japanese counterpart Akitaka Saiki and for a trilateral gathering with Saiki and South Korean chief delegate to six-party talks Kim Sook. He will then move to Beijing on Friday for talks with his Chinese counterpart Wu Dawei.

The six-way process, which stalled after North Korea missed the end- of-2007 deadline to submit a nuclear declaration, shows signs of moving forward again.

"I think we are getting there on the declaration," Hill said, touching on the need to "move on to what I hope will be a decisive phase" of North Korea's full denuclearization.

But he ruled out any moves toward advancing the six-party process before the Group of Eight foreign ministers' talks to be held June 26- 27 in Kyoto.

The current second phase of denuclearization under a six-party deal, which obliges North Korea to disable its nuclear facilities and declare all its nuclear programs, is to be followed by the third phase in which Pyongyang must give up all its fissile material.