China: China moved centre stage in an effort to ease tensions raised by North Korea's nuclear weapons programme when it said it would put pressure on Pyongyang to come back to the negotiating table.
The stakes in the two-year nuclear standoff in the region were raised dramatically on Thursday when North Korea boasted it had nuclear weapons and that it was boycotting disarmament negotiations.
"China will stay in touch with all relevant parties and strive to make the situation develop in a positive direction so that the six-party talks could be resumed as soon as possible," the Chinese Foreign Minister, Mr Li Zhaoxing, told US Secretary of State Dr Condoleezza Rice in a phone call on Saturday evening, a report on the official news agency Xinhua said.
China's outward-looking leadership is seeking a more active diplomatic role in the region and wants to be seen as the honest broker in the dispute.
Beijing has hosted the three rounds of six-nation talks, which are made up of both Koreas, China, the US, Russia and Japan.
Washington wants China to use its position as the North's last major ally, and the leading supplier of food and energy aid for its flagging economy, to put pressure on Pyongyang.
Although China has a certain loyalty to North Korea, including strong military links historically, it is also eager not to jeopardise growing trade links with Washington and other participants in the talks.
South Korean foreign minister Mr Ban Ki-moon, in Washington on a scheduled trip, also said he believed that "China should strengthen efforts to persuade the North", he was told the South Korean news agency Yonhap.
Mr Ban said the south had no plans to halt aid to the north and that South Korea provided its rival with fertiliser and rice because of "humanitarian concerns".
The announcement on Thursday took the world by surprise. North Korea said it had built nuclear weapons to defend itself from an alleged threat of invasion by the United States.
For its part, the US has said it has no intention of attacking North Korea, a country which President George Bush has named as a key element in his central axis of "rogue states".
Washington wants Pyongyang to stop building nuclear weapons, but the North Koreans want their concerns about security to be addressed and also want economic aid to boost the Stalinist country's ailing economy.
China is keen to prove its diplomatic mettle in the dispute.
In China's best interests would be a compromise resulting in a nuclear-free neighbour in the Korean peninsula, but one which also addresses North Korea's security fears. There has been a lot of surprisingly outspoken commentary about the issue in China.
Many state-run newspapers ran editorials critical of Pyongyang, while censored Internet chat rooms were also tough on the capital for announcing it had nuclear weapons.
North Korea and the US have been at odds over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions for years and especially since October 2002, when US Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly said the North told him it had a secret weapons programme.