Japan and China agreed Friday that all six nations party to the talks should meet at the regional forum in Kuala Lumpur, and China indicated it opposed holding talks without Pyongyang, Japan's Kyodo news agency said.

The United States and South Korea had shown interest in holding five-way talks if North Korea refused to return to the negotiating table.

But US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice said Friday she would be "very happy" to attend six-party talks in the Malaysian capital.

Speaking to a group of Asian journalists, Rice stressed that any nuclear negotiations with North Korea must be within the six-party framework of the two Koreas, Japan, the United States, China and Russia.

"If the North Koreans want to come to six-party talks at any level, I think it would be fine, but we need to do it at six parties," the secretary of state said when asked if she would be willing to meet with North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam-Sun who was expected to attend the July 28 ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF).

"But if we could have a six-party meeting in Kuala Lumpur, I would be very happy to attend," she said.

Rice defended Washington's insistence on a six-party framework, saying last week's UN Security Council resolution criticizing Pyongyang's test launches showed "that this is a problem that North Korea has with the entire international community."

North Korea has shunned the six-way talks since November to protest US financial sanctions on a Macau bank accused of money laundering on its behalf.

Japan and South Korea have 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.

China's President Hu Jintao used a phone conversation Friday with his South Korean counterpart, Roh Moo-Hyun, 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 July 5 missile launches, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

Rice called North Korea "a completely irresponsible state and dangerous" for its missile tests.

"When you look at them testing missiles, not telling anybody they're firing them in all different directions, and they're saying that they have a nuclear weapons capability ... that they could make those together is very dangerous," she said.

Christopher Hill, the US assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs, who will attend the ASEAN meeting with 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."

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.

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