U.S. President George W. Bush will urge Chinese leader Hu Jintao to help get North Korea to return to the six-party talks during their upcoming summit, a senior U.S. official said Monday.

The official also said the Bush administration will raise the issue of Beijing"s continued repatriation of North Korean refugees.

Briefing reporters on Hu"s Thursday visit to Washington, he said China can persuade North Korea to open up its society and let "good things happen," mirroring its own decision in the 1970s.

China is the host of the so-called six-party talks also involving South and North Korea, the United States, Russia and Japan.

The senior official, declining to be identified by name, said President George W. Bush will be talking to Hu about the North Korean situation, to "urge President Hu to help in the process of getting the North Koreans to return to the six-party talks."

"In many ways, North Korea needs to make the same decision China made in the early 1970s, and that is that you open to the outside world and good things happen," he said.

"It"s time for North Korea to make the strategic decision that will be best for its people."

Meanwhile. Deputy U.S. Secretary of State Robert Zoellick said the North Korean nuclear crisis was among key issues to be discussed by Bush and Hu.

He said China should play a more assertive role in breaking a deadlock in six-nation talks aimed at ending North Korea"s nuclear weapons drive.

China has mediated the talks, which include the United States, the two Koreas, Japan and Russia.

"What we are urging the Chinese to recognize is that they need to be more than a mediator," Zoellick said when asked at a forum about the stalled negotiations aimed at wooing North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons in return for diplomatic, security and energy supply guarantees.

"They need to be a participant that recognizes that they have an interest in trying to solve this problem and this relates to the nuclear issue and also relates to the notion of what sort of change and stabilitive change in the context of the Korean Peninsula," he said.

North Korea declared last year that it had nuclear weapons, deepening a standoff, which began when the United States accused the communist state in 2002 of secretly enriching uranium.

Pyongyang has shunned the six-party talks since November to protest U.S. financial sanctions imposed over allegations that the regime was counterfeiting U.S. dollars and laundering money through a bank in Macau.

Bush may also seek Hu"s perception of North Korea following a landmark January visit by the North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to China"s economically booming areas, Zoellick said.

"I think it will be very interesting to get President Hu, to encourage him, to talk to President Bush about what conclusions does China draw from that about the prospects for North Korea," he said.

Some North Korea watchers regard Kim"s tour as a prelude to extensive reform in his reclusive nation in the near future.