North Korea has been invited to the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in Kuala Lumpur on July 28, along with representatives from other six-party nations: the United States, Japan, Russia, China and South Korea.

Christopher Hill, the US assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs, who will be at the meeting with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said that even if North Korea keeps up its boycott of nuclear talks the United States would still seek talks with the other four nations.

"We hope to be meeting the six-party partners," Hill told a meeting with journalists.

"At this point I can't tell you in what format we will meet them and I cannot tell you whether the North Koreans will be a part of a meeting," he added. "But our purpose is to consult our partners on the way ahead."

North Korea has drawn increased attention following its launch of long range missiles on July 4, which has been condemned by a UN Security Council resolution.

China's President Hu Jintao used a phone conversation with his South Korean counterpart, Roh Moo-Hyun, on Friday to call for new six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons, China's state media said.

Hu urged "calm and restraint" as regional tensions remained high over Pyongyang's missile launches, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

Japan and South Korea have also agreed to use the regional security forum, organised by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, to press for North Korea's return to six-nation talks.

North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam-Sun is due to attend the ARF meeting.

But North Korea has showed no sign that it will return to nuclear talks and angrily rejected the UN resolution over its missiles. It has vowed to bolster its defences, blaming the "hostile" policy of the United States for the new emergency.

"North Korea is not listening to too many people these days," said Hill.

"One wishes that the North Koreans would put as much energy into the six-party process as they do into their public statements. Their public statements really reflect certain imagination and efforts to let us know what they feel. Alas, they haven't done that in the six-party process."

Hill said China would play a crucial role in the future of the nuclear talks.

He said the China-North Korea relationship was the "key issue" for the talks and added: "I think that relationship have begun to shift."

"Now the question is can we work with the Chinese to get closer to them and can we make sure that as China looks to see how they implement the Security Council resolution, they do it in a way that can produce a change of behaviour in North Korea."

Hill said Washington does not want regime change in Pyongyang, "but we certainly are going to insist on a behaviour change. And I think we increasingly see in our partners an understanding that this current behaviour of the North Korean regime is indeed unacceptable."

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