Speaking by telephone, "the two leaders reiterated their commitment to working together toward a nuclear-free (Korean) peninsula while expressing concern about North Korea," said Bush spokesman Scott McClellan.

Bush also called on Hu to "reach out" more formally to Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian after opposition leaders from the island made historic visits to mainland China, McClellan told reporters.

"We believe, ultimately, that there needs to be continued dialogue with the duly elected leaders in Taiwan; and that means President Chen and his cabinet. That's the best way to continue to promote peace and stability in the cross-Strait region," said the spokesman.

Bush, who is expected to travel to China late this year, is considering the possibility of taking North Korea to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions if Pyongyang does not return to the negotiations, US officials say.

But the US president indicated in a press conference last week that shifting away from the talks and towards a more muscular diplomatic approach would require agreement from Washington's four partners.

On Friday, Bush was to leave for Europe, where he was to meet with President Vladimir Putin of Russia, another participant in the six-party talks.

The six-party negotiations, which group the two Koreas, Russia, China, Japan and the United States, have been stalled for nearly a year since a third round of negotiations last June.

The North has boycotted the nuclear disarmament talks since it failed to show up at a fourth round scheduled for Beijing last September, citing "hostile" US policy toward the communist state.

"We hope North Korea will change their mind and come back to the talks. They had expressed a commitment to coming to the talks. Since that time, they have shown an unwillingness to come back to the talks," said McClellan.

The spokesman repeated the Bush administration's refusal to hold bilateral talks with North Korea, saying that there was "plenty of opportunity" for the two countries to talk within the context of six-party talks.

Pyongyang announced in February that it possessed nuclear weapons and then shut down its nuclear power plant in April in an apparent bid to unload and reprocess spent fuel to glean more weapons-grade plutonium.

The conversation came after Chen publicly urged Hu to visit Taiwan "to see whether or not the Republic of China, Taiwan, is an independent sovereign state."

China considers Taiwan a part of its territory that must be brought back under its rule even though the island has been ruled as a de facto independent state since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949.

It is extremely distrustful of Chen, who won elections in 2000 and 2004 on a platform stressing Taiwan's independent identity and denouncing China's missile build-up targeting the island.

Taiwanese opposition figure James Soong Thursday arrived in China vowing to build a bridge to better cross strait relations.

Soong's nine-day trip comes only days after Lien Chan, leader of Taiwan's main opposition Kuomintang (KMT) or Nationalist Party, returned from a landmark visit to mainland China.

Lien was given a welcome fit for a head of state in what analysts said was an attempt by Hu's government to undermine Chen.

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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