'Our primary goal is to get back to the negotiating table in Beijing,' said Mr Dennis Wilder, the top Asia hand on Mr Bush's national security council. 'I think the goal is early December, would be the best timing,' he said.

Mr Bush, in Peru for an Asia-Pacific summit, was also to see leaders of Japan, Russia, and South Korea, Washington's other partners in six-country diplomatic efforts to end the secretive regime's atomic ambitions, before leaving on Sunday.

The US president also planned a vigorous defence of his foreign policy over eight years in office, before successor Barack Obama takes office on Jan 20 and inherits wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the global economic crisis.

'I have given it my all,' the vastly unpopular US leader said in an interview with Peru's America TV.

Mr Bush was to echo that theme in a speech on Saturday to the Asia-Pacific Economic (Apec) forum, a 21-member group that makes up about 55 per cent of the world's economy and 41 per cent of its population.

With no major breakthroughs on Middle East peace, or Iran's nuclear defiance, and little trust that North Korea will be fully disarmed over the next two months, the White House has increasingly argued that Mr Bush will leave his successor diplomatic structures that will eventually pay off.

Mr Wilder, speaking aboard the president's official Air Force One airplane, said the China-hosted six-party talks were one such venue, and said the goal of a new round would be to forge a united front on a plan to verify that North Korea is fully complying with an aid-for-disarmament deal reached last year.

'We need to put in place in the six-party context, the verification principles that we have worked out, to a certain extent, bilaterally with the North Koreans,' Mr Wilder told reporters.

Mr Bush will discuss the issue in Lima with Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso, South Korean President Lee Myung Bak - first separately and then together - as well as with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Saturday.

'We are very much hoping that, by the time we leave Apec, we will have the timing of that meeting in place,' said Mr Wilder, who praised Mr Bush as the architect of the talks and hailed his policies towards East Asia.

'What I hope we leave in place for the next administration, and what I think we can, is a very viable six-party process, a commitment on all parts that this is the way to negotiate the ultimate denuclearisation of the North Korean peninsula,' he said.

Mr Bush's main goal at the Apec summit was to get members to sign on to the declaration by the Group of 20 - the world's major rich and developing nations - of core principles for managing the global economic crisis, aides said.

Another round of G-20 talks is expected in April, some three months after Mr Obama takes office, as leaders grapple with proposals to overhaul international regulations to prevent a future meltdown.

Mr Bush, who in March 2002 became the first sitting US president to visit Peru, also hoped to use his second trip here to fight criticisms from Latin America that he ignored the region after the Sept 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

'I'm certain a lot of people in the neighbourhood, Central and South America, said 'well, he's only focused on the Middle East, he doesn't really seem to care about us,' he told America TV. 'I strongly disagree with that.'

Mr Bush's top Latin America adviser at the White House, Mr Dan Fisk, said aboard Air Force One that Mr Bush had made nine trips to Latin America and had 350 meetings or telephone calls with leaders from the Western Hemisphere.

Mr Fisk called the trip 'a good capstone' for Mr Bush's eight years in office, saying US-Brazil relations were better than ever and citing increased regional trade. -- AFP

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