"It's been our view that Russia should participate in multilateral discussions about the North Korean nuclear weapons program," said Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, adding it was discussed with Chinese leaders during his visit here.

"In fact, we think that it would be useful for all five of the legitimate nuclear weapons states to participate."

He was apparently referring to the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia.

Bolton, who is in Beijing en route to South Korea and Japan, said the United States does not see any point in restricting the number of participants.

"I don't see that we're making progress by denying entry into the negotiations of countries that have a legitimate, substantial stake in the outcome," he said at a briefing. "It's important to have broad participation."

He said Russia's participation was warranted since it is a major power in the region and could be directly affected by the actions North Korea takes.

Moscow also could be helpful in convincing Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons program, he said.

"Russia has a historic relationship with North Korea that could make it an important factor in convincing NK it has to abandon its nuclear weapons program," Bolton said.

"And as both a permanent member of the (UN) Security Council and one of the five legitimate nuclear weapons states, I think that's also a substantial argument for Russia's participation."

With apparent stalemate on when the next round of talks will happen, Bolton said the issue was not the format of talks, but the need to eliminate North Korea's nuclear weapons program.

"The issue is not ultimately what the shape of the talks is. The issue is how we're going to get on a multilateral basis North Korea's nuclear program dismantled in a complete, verifiable and irreversible way," he said.

"We're prepared and we've said we're prepared in a variety of multilateral format to begin discussions as to how we're going to accomplish that objective. And I think that for us is the focus ..."

Bolton said Washington has been "very flexible" on the format, as long as it is multilateral.

"We've been very flexible in the range of multilateral options that we've been willing to consider and to push forth and we've gone as low as three, a low which you cannot go anymore and still be multilateral. And we've gone as high as 10...," Bolton said.

"It's important to have broad participation. North Korea benefited in the 1993, 1994 Agreed Framework by making it seem as if this were an issue with the United States alone whereas it manifestly is not.

"The threat posed by the North Korean program extends to all the countries (in this region) and globally as well."

WAR.WIRE