Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Tuesday it was "essential" for the United States to pursue the multilateral nuclear disarmament talks with North Korea that began under George W. Bush.

In her first news briefing since taking charge of US foreign policy last week, Clinton made it clearer than previously that President Barack Obama's administration will largely follow the format pursued under president Bush.

"With respect to North Korea, the six-party talks are essential," Clinton told reporters when asked if her testimony at a Senate hearing on January 13 indicated there were other ways to engage Pyongyang on disarmament.

Clinton told senators the new administration was reviewing the six-party talks -- which are deadlocked over a row over verifying dismantlement -- but called them "a vehicle" to pressure Pyongyang into changing its behavior.

The negotiations involve the United States, the two Koreas, Japan, China and Russia.

Clinton also said Tuesday that the existing format allowed for one-on-one US-NKorean talks, which she suggested could be pursued when a reporter asked if the Obama team might intensify them as part of a new approach.

But she did not elaborate.

The six-party talks "have not only been a useful forum for participants to deal with the challenge of North Korea's nuclear program, and the other issues that are part of the North Korean agenda," Clinton said.

"But within the six-party talks there have been bilateral meetings," said the chief US diplomat.

"We are going to pursue steps that we think are effective. And I think I will leave it at that, but it is important that I underscore what we see as the significance of the six-party talks," Clinton said.

With its five partners, Pyongyang in 2007 signed a pact which calls for scrapping its nuclear weapons in return for aid, normalized relations with the United States and Japan and a formal peace pact on the Korean peninsula.

But the negotiations are deadlocked as North Korea resists certain demands by its partners on how to verify it is disabling and dismantling is nuclear programs.

North Korea is disabling its nuclear plants under the latest phase of the pact but has not started negotiations on the final phase, which would involve the surrender of weapons and the establishment of normalized relations.

The North frequently demands verification that US nuclear weapons have been withdrawn from South Korea. The US said this was done in the early 1990s.

Unlike on North Korea, the Obama administration has set a different tone from the previous Bush administration on key foreign policy challenges like Iran, Afghanistan and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The Obama administration has offered to engage Iran on nuclear and other issues, something the Bush team shied away from. And it has appointed special envoys for the Middle East as well as for Afghanistan and Pakistan, high-profile moves the Bush administration resisted.