THE United States offered an olive branch to North Korea and Burma yesterday, with the promise of peace and opportunity if their isolated regimes made the right “strategic choices”.

The change of tone came as President George W Bush used a summit in Vietnam to try to hold together America’s Asian allies in maintaining pressure on North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons.

Washington’s overture to the two most intractable regimes in the region was interpreted by some as an acknowledgment that Bush has been weakened by defeat in the US midterm elections and by the violence in Iraq.

The president “understands political constraints”, said Tony Snow, the White House press secretary.

America found itself forced to wage a charm offensive, where once it waged an air offensive, as the Hanoi summit developed into a contest for influence with the rising power, China.

Speaking in Hanoi, Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, said yesterday that America’s experience with Vietnam showed that former enemies could be friends and partners. “This case of Vietnam is instructive,” she told businessmen and officials. “It shows that the past can be overcome.”

She said that Vietnam’s communist leaders had opted to restore relations with the United States, reform the country’s economy and join the global trading system.

“There are other nations with which we hope to overcome differences, too,” Rice said with emphasis, singling out North Korea and Burma. If they followed Vietnam’s example, a new path of peace and opportunity could open up for them.

Rice was warmly applauded, but behind the scenes at the Asia-Pacific summit US diplomats were struggling to win support for the Bush administration’s tough policies against both regimes.

Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser, said the United States was “pleased” with a declaration expected to urge Pyongyang to return to nuclear disarmament talks and abide by United Nations resolutions. But the Americans have failed to win a consensus for strong measures against North Korea after its test explosion of a nuclear device on October 9.

Even the president of South Korea rebuffed Bush’s entreaties to join naval inspections of North Korean cargo vessels. Nor is there much support for America’s aim of bringing Burma before the UN security council.

The difference in treatment and perceptions between Bush and President Hu Jintao of China — whose country also fought against Vietnam, in a 1979 border war — has been conspicuous in Hanoi.

Bush’s Vietnam schedule was abruptly cut back after the election defeat, diplomatic sources said. His few public engagements have been tightly controlled. Heavily protected by thousands of elite troops and police, Bush has hardly been seen by Hanoi’s inhabitants.

The Chinese leader, however, arrived several days before the summit for a flower-strewn schedule of smiles and ribbon-cutting intended to show Asians that Beijing, not Washington, is now the capital that counts.

A Chinese diplomat said his country had minutely prepared Hu’s trip months in advance, resulting in the signature of a dozen economic agreements, promises to resolve border disputes and agreement to share offshore exploration for oil and gas.

Hu delivered a bland speech to an audience of global business executives and was visibly pleased to hear two western chief executives first praise his “inspiring remarks”, then thank him for his leadership of the Chinese people. No such flattery was accorded to Bush.

When the US president flies to Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, tomorrow he will face an even harder sell for his policies. The Indonesian government has mobilised thousands of security personnel to seal off the hill town of Bogor, in Java, where Air Force One will stop for just a few hours.

Some 50 Islamist groups are planning a mass demonstration in central Jakarta and are promising to send crowds of the faithful to Bogor to protest at the visit.

A spokesman for the militant group alleged to have been behind the 2002 Bali bombing said it was legitimate for Muslims to take violent action against Bush.

The threat came from Fauzan, who speaks for the Indonesian Mujaheddin Council, headed by Abu Bakar Bashir, the extremist cleric. “His blood is halal to shed,” said Fauzan, referring to the Arabic term for religious approval. “How many people have died or suffer because of his policy in the Middle East?"

The militants are using the occasion to whip up sentiment against the secular government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who supports America’s war on Islamic extremism.

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