Bush, arriving at an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Santiago, Chile on Friday evening, wanted to show his seriousness in dragging Pyongyang back to the six-party talks, the official said.

The US president will meet with heads of the other parties at the talks -- Japan, China, Russia and South Korea -- on the sidelines of the weekend summit. The sixth member, North Korea, is not part of APEC.

"I think we are going through an intense process," the US official said.

"I think the president's meetings with the leaders on this can be quite significant in stating his own commitment to the six-party process and how important he thinks it is," he said.

Ministers of the 21-member APEC forum set the stage for the North Korean crisis to be discussed by their leaders, adopting a joint statement underlining the need to curb nuclear proliferation by North Korea and Iran.

There was "a general agreement that all of us in the region had to put increasing pressure on the North Koreans to participate in the six-party talks," Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said.

The meetings in Chile would be Bush's first chance to meet his partners in the North Korea talks since being re-elected, he said.

The US goal was that its partners would leave Santiago able to tell North Korea: "We talked to president Bush and he is serious about these talks and we are too," the State Department official said.

Bush may have to be cautious in taking any hard line on North Korea as it may hurt the feelings of its southern neighbor.

South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun warned last week that hard-line tactics on Pyongyang would have "grave repercussions."

"There is no alternative left in dealing with this issue except dialogue, and a hard-line policy will have grave repercussions and implications for the Korean peninsula," Roh said. "I trust the United States will respect the hard reality facing the Koreans."

The Bush administration's tough policy toward North Korea has put it at odds with South Korea in the past.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell met with his Chinese counterpart Li Zhaoxing and discussed the crisis on the Korean peninsula Thursday, the State Department official said.

"We talked about having the six-party talks as soon as possible. There was no specific date. The secretary (of state) noted we had a solid proposal on the table," the State Department official said.

Three rounds of multilateral talks, seeking to persuade Pyongyang to take aid and security guarantees in return for mothballing the nuclear program, have taken place since the stand-off erupted in October 2002.

North Korea boycotted a fourth round of talks in September.

"We certainly do not favor setting any preconditions for returning to the talks, or negotiating our proposal of last June (of aid for disarmament) outside of the talks," the US official said.

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