The United States in sessions Friday with visiting Chinese Vice-Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo pressed its case to expand talks with North Korea on its suspected nuclear weapons program to include other nations in the region.

The Americans want Japan and South Korea to get seats at the table to help bring about a peaceful non-nuclear Korean peninsula.

US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Dai held an unusually long 2 1/2-hour meeting with Secretary of State Colin Powell and other U.S. officials. Powell's meetings rarely last longer than an hour.

Dai had also met with Vice President Dick Cheney and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice at the White House. He described the sessions as useful. "We both agreed to work together to push the process forward and resolve the issue," said Dai, who visited Pyongyang July 12-15. 

Boucher said the United States made clear in the talks with Dai "our strong belief that the time has come for other parties to join the multilateral talks in order to insure that all key issues are addressed." He said the objective of the talks is to establish a peaceful, non-nuclear Korean peninsula.

The United States wants Japan and South Korea and possibly Russia to join the sessions. At the previous round in Beijing in April, China, the United States and North Korea took part. China is pressing for another such session.

Boucher said President Bush has consistently pursued a diplomatic approach to the nuclear stalemate "despite North Korean threats and steps in the wrong direction."

He also said Powell expressed appreciation to Dai "for the tremendous effort China has put into this matter." Boucher said the two countries will remain in close touch on these issues.

Dai's trip is the latest in a flurry of diplomacy by China aimed at calming tensions over North Korea's nuclear program, which the United States believes is aimed at producing nuclear weapons. North Korean claims to have completed extraction of plutonium, a crucial ingredient in nuclear weapons, from 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods.

North Korea has demanded one-on-one discussions with the United States because it says the nuclear issue is bilateral. The Bush administration says the issue is regional.

A South Korean official expressed optimism Friday that countries involved in the dispute were moving toward multilateral talks.

"We see various ideas floating, but the broad picture is that we are moving toward multilateral talks, and we are optimistic," said Wie Sung-rak, head of the North America bureau of the South Korean Foreign Ministry.

Wie said South Korea was briefed on Dai's visit to Pyongyang but refused to divulge details. South Korean news reports say China is pushing for new North Korean-U.S.-Chinese talks, which would later be joined by South Korea and Japan.

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