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By Park Hyun, Washington correspondent

White House National Security Advisor Susan Rice has said it is prepared to reopen talks with North Korea if Pyongyang is willing to have sincere negotiations about its whole nuclear program.

But it also warned that the North would pay a steep price if it carries out any new provocations.

Delivering a talk titled “America’s Future in Asia” at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. on Nov. 20, Rice said the US was “prepared for negotiations, provided that they are authentic and credible, get at the entirety of the North’s nuclear program, and result in concrete and irreversible steps toward denuclearization.”

Rice went on to say, “Pyongyang’s attempts to engage in dialogue while keeping critical elements of its weapons programs running are unacceptable, and they will not succeed.”

Analysts took her remarks to mean that Pyongyang will have to put its entire nuclear program on the table - including both plutonium and enriched uranium - if it hopes to get the six-party talks resumed, and that it would have to halt all nuclear testing and freeze its nuclear facilities once they began.

Rice also said the US would continue working with the international community to apply sanctions and pressure North Korea into denuclearization, taking all necessary action to protect its allies.

“There will continue to be significant costs to future provocations,” she warned.

“Pyongyang has a choice: on the one hand lies greater isolation and crippling economic privation; on the other, a true chance for peace, development and global integration,” she continued.

Rice went on to say that “rebalancing” with regard to the Asia-Pacific region “remains a cornerstone of the Obama administration’s foreign policy,” adding that Obama plans to visit Asia in April of next year.

While Rice did not mention any specific countries, the top destinations would appear to be the Southeast Asian countries he was scheduled to tour last month in a trip that was canceled because of the US government shutdown - namely Indonesia, Brunei, Malaysia, and the Philippines.

Rice also said the US plans to assign its allies more responsibility in responding to new challenges to security in Asia. In particular, she made the first public reference to the US agreeing to change its defense cooperation guidelines with Japan by next year, and to Japan’s plans to set up its own National Security Council.

“Japan is also creating its first-ever National Security Council, and I look forward to working closely with my Japanese counterpart on regional and global challenges,” she said.

On the alliance with South Korea, Rice said the US was “enhancing the alliance’s military capabilities to ensure that our combined forces can deter and fully answer North Korea’s provocations.”

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