BEIJING (Reuters) - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice attended a church service in Beijing on Sunday in a visit that highlighted U.S. concern for religious freedom in the world's most populous country.

The symbolic visit to one of China's largest state-approved churches followed Rice's repeated denouncements during a tour of Asia about Beijing's human rights record, and particularly its restrictions on worship.

But in a sign the public images contrasted with her behind-the-scenes diplomacy, Rice did not make religious freedom a priority in meetings with China's top leaders on Sunday. Instead, she would discuss rights and democracy at a lower-level on Monday, a senior State Department official said.

Rice's trip to China -- the last leg of a six-country tour across Asia -- came at an awkward time in Sino-U.S. relations as the major powers are also at odds over Taiwan, Beijing's rapid military buildup and North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

Just before flying to China, Rice made her sharpest criticism to-date of a European Union plan to lift an embargo on arms sales to Beijing at a time when tensions have been rising between China and Taiwan.

The United States has vowed to defend the island if China attacks what it regards as a renegade province.

"The European Union should do nothing to contribute to a circumstance in which Chinese military modernization draws on European technology ... when, in fact, it is the United States -- not Europe -- that has defended the Pacific," Rice told reporters in Seoul, referring to the strong U.S. military presence in Asia since World War II.

Rice was alluding to U.S. fears that European arms sales could eventually be used in a conflict against the United States, the U.S. official said.

"We don't want to see a situation where American forces face European technologies (in Asia)," the official, who asked not to be named, said.

Rice also used her trip to increase pressure on Beijing to persuade its communist neighbor North Korea to return to negotiations over scrapping its nuclear arms programs but China retorted that the talks needed U.S. "flexibility," he said.

PREACHER'S DAUGHTER

At the Gangwashi church, just west of Tiananmen Square, Rice listened to a translation of the service through headphones and sang hymns in front of an altar bordered with plastic green plants in pots.

The congregation of several hundred applauded Rice when she left at the end of the service at a church that had supported the 1989 pro-democracy movement.

China is on a U.S. blacklist of only a handful of countries worldwide considered "of particular concern" for limiting religious freedom.

Despite laws meant to protect religious freedom, the Communist government forbids organized worship outside state-backed "patriotic" religious organizations.

A preacher's daughter, who describes herself as deeply religious, Rice has always attended church on Palm Sunday, an important date in the Christian calendar.