President George W. Bush's administration, which angered many traditional allies with its 2003 invasion of Iraq, is now saying it wants to work with allies to handle many problems facing the world.

The United States has let Britain, France and Germany lead negotiations with Iran over the Islamic republic's nuclear activities, which Washington suspects are a front for an atomic bomb program.

"Our strategy is to work with the EU-3 -- France and Great Britain and Germany -- so that the Iranians hear a common voice speaking to them about their nuclear weapons ambitions," Bush said Thursday.

It has also been one of five countries -- with China, Japan, Russia and South Korea -- trying to persuade North Korea to halt its nuclear weapons program in return for political and economic benefits.

"We certainly commend and appreciate the Chinese government for the really great work that they did in convening the talks and moving the talks forward, in working up the draft joint statements that were the basis for so much of the negotiations in Beijing," said State Department spokesman Adam Ereli.

Analysts see a change of tone in the Bush administration's second term following his election triumph in November.

"It is a real change in the sense that after all, their capacity to act unilateraly themselves has been greatly reduced by the war in Iraq," said Anatol Lieven, a senior research fellow at the New American Foundation, a Washington-based public policy institute.

But the difficulties faced with North Korea and Iran have shown that multilateralism has its limits.

"Of course (US multilateralism) is sincere, of course its is real," said Simon Serfati, a US foreign policy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "But for it to remain in force, it must demonstrate its effectiveness."

The six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear ambitions broke off on August 7 after two weeks of intense negotiations without any sign of agreement on how to get the Stalinst state to abandon atomic weapons.

The talks, however, are scheduled to resume in the final week of August.

Iran, meanwhile, is at loggerheads with the international community over its nuclear program after it resumed sensitive uranium conversion activities last week, ending a nine-month freeze agreed on during talks with the Europeans.

"It is one thing to say you are going to work with allies, and to try to get allies to produce results that you like, whether over North Korea or over Iran," Lieven said. "It is a very different thing actually to listen to the allies and to make the kind of changes and concessions in your policy, which would actually allow the allies to achieve anything."

"It is pretty clear that in the case of Iran, the Europeans on their own simply cannot offer enough," he said.

Iran will not give up its nuclear program without economic concessions and diplomatic recognition from the United States, he said.

"If Americans will not offer that, then ultimately, the British, the French and the Germans are not going to succede," Lieven added.

North Korea also wants diplomatic recognition from Washington.

"Of course, it does raise enormous questions whether you could trust the North Koreans about that," Lieven said.

"But nonetheless, if the Americans do not even consider offering that as a bargaining trick, then it is also highly unlikely that the Chinese again will be able to achieve anything," he said.