While Bush called for a co-ordinated response to Pyongyang, Hu urged calm and restraint.

Wu, China's top negotiator to the Six-Party Talks, will accompany Vice-Premier Hui Liangyu on a visit to Pyongyang next week, which is expected to help defuse the missile crisis.

China and Russia have insisted on negotiating without threats of punishment. After a second day of meetings on Thursday in New York, China and Russia refused to back a Japanese-sponsored resolution and said they preferred a milder statement with no mention of sanctions.

But Japan and the United States are seeking a toughly worded UN Security Council condemnation.

Hill told reporters on Friday afternoon that he did not discuss sanctions in talks with China.

Pyongyang lashed out at Tokyo on Friday for imposing sanctions and threatened "stronger actions" against Japan if its sanctions were not lifted.

Japan has banned a DPRK ferry from entering its ports for six months as part of a package of initial sanctions.

"This may force us to take stronger physical actions," Kyodo news agency quoted Song Il-ho, the DPRK's ambassador in charge of diplomatic normalization talks with Japan, as saying.

The DPRK's councillor at the UN mission in Geneva, Choe Myong-nam, told the ROK's Yonhap news agency that Wednesday's volley of missiles were "not an attack on someone" and defended Pyongyang's right to such launches.

"From an international point of view, it is not fair to say who can do one thing and who can't," Choe said. "The same applies to possessing nuclear weapons."

The ROK will delay food and fertilizer shipments to the DPRK until the missile crisis is resolved, Yonhap reported on Friday.

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