Thursday, March 24 2005 10:20 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Waco (US): US President George W Bush yesterday (Mar 23, 2005) said that North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il must return to six-party talks aimed at ending a nuclear dispute but denied setting a June deadline for them to resume.

"For the sake of peace and tranquillity and stability in the Far East, Kim Jong-Il must listen," Bush said as he hosted a summit with Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin and Mexican President Vicente Fox.

"I'm a patient person. And so are a lot of people that are involved in this issue. But the leader of North Korea must understand that when we five nations speak, we mean what we say," said Bush.

Bush said that the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had given him a two-hour briefing on her recently completed trip to Asia and denied that the chief US diplomat had set a deadline for the stalled talks to resume.

"What we said is what we've said to North Korea: If you want the way forward, if you want to be accepted by the world, if you want not to be isolated, get rid of your weapons programmes," said the president.

"And fortunately, it's not just the United States of America saying that. China says that," said Bush.

"As a matter of fact, it was here at Crawford that (then Chinese supreme leader) Jiang Zemin, at the ranch, said that the foreign policy goal of the Chinese is for there to be no nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula," he said.

"And Hu Jintao made that clear to Secretary Rice that that is still the objective of the Chinese Government. So we share an objective. We share a goal. The Japanese share that goal. The South Koreans share that goal. The Russians share that goal," said Bush.