Lima - Chinese President Hu Jintao met outgoing US President George W Bush on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific summit, discussing North Korea's nuclear programme and the global financial crisis, a White House spokeswoman said.

US officials said Bush would also meet with the leaders of Japan, South Korea and Russia, the other parties involved in the six-nation talks aimed at ending the North's nuclear weapons programme, at this weekend's Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Lima. Bush wants to restart the stalled talks, which Beijing hosts, before the end of the year, they said.

The 21-nation APEC summit was to be Bush's final foreign trip before he leaves office in January.

Over the past weekend in Washington, he hosted the Group of 20, which consists of the world's richest countries and biggest developing economies, in talks on how to fight the global financial turmoil, and the summit in Peru was expected to be dominated by the same topic.

In their talks Friday, Bush and Hu discussed the need to end protectionist trade policies and conclude the latest round of World Trade Organization talks, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters.

Bush said in his weekly radio address, which he taped before he left Washington, that he would speak in Lima of the importance of the summit "at a time of serious turmoil in the global economy" but also one of "unprecedented cooperation."

"As we work to rebuild confidence in our financial systems in the short term, we must also work to promote long-term economic growth," Bush was to say in the address, according to a text of the speech that was made available to the media ahead of its airing on Saturday.

He added that countries must remain focused on "three great forces that drive this growth - free markets, free trade and free people."

Perino also said Bush and Hu talked about how to formalize the verification of North Korea's declarations on its nuclear programme, which the United States has been demanding and which has held up the nuclear talks. (dpa)