The talks are an unusual diplomatic venture by China and reflect how much its communist government has changed since Beijing sent 1 million soldiers to die fighting for its North Korean allies during the Korean War. 

The 1953 agreement that ended that fight left the Korean Peninsula one of the world's most heavily armed as well as a legacy of tensions between North and South Korea. 

Though it still gives North Korea fuel and food, China is increasingly viewed as a potential partner in efforts to ensure stability on the peninsula and rein in Pyongyang's ambitions to join the club of nuclear-armed nations. 

None of the governments will give details of the talks, which start Wednesday. But U.S. diplomats say they are to last through Friday and are aimed at achieving a "verifiable, irreversible end to North Korea's nuclear program." 

Beijing says it doesn't want North Korea's hardline communist regime to have nuclear weapons and is committed to finding a peaceful negotiated settlement. 

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said Tuesday that the "top priority" of the talks is for the parties to meet face to face and ease the strain of the standoff. 

"We hope that the talks will be conducive to relevant parties for having a better knowledge of each others' stand and to release the current tension," said Liu, who wouldn't provide details. 

China got involved only grudgingly. It usually tries to keep a low diplomatic profile and says it doesn't want to get involved in other conflicts. 

But while Beijing kept on the sidelines during the Iraq war, it has critical interests in North Korea, said Pan Shaozhong, a United States specialist at the Foreign Affairs College in Beijing. 

China worries that a new U.S.-North Korean conflict could bring Western forces to its border and unleash a flood of refugees into its northeast, Pan said. That would threaten the stability that China's new generation of leaders seek as they try to concentrate on easing poverty and other domestic tasks. 

"It's a very dangerous situation," Pan said. "We don't like this at all." 

Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly is leading the American delegation to the talks, which includes military and Defense Department officials. The United States keeps 37,000 soldiers in South Korea. 

Japan and South Korea were sending diplomats to Beijing to monitor the talks, though the Chinese spokesman Liu said it was "still up in the air" whether they would be allowed to take part in later rounds of discussions. 

Tensions over the North Korea's nuclear program rose in October after U.S. officials said North Korea acknowledged it had embarked on a uranium-based nuclear weapons program. 

Since then, Pyongyang has become the first country to withdraw from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and restarted a plutonium-producing reactor. 

"Step one is for North Korea to rectify the situation and give up its nuclear weapons program," Thomas Hubbard, the U.S. ambassador in Seoul, said Tuesday in an interview on South Korean radio. 

North Korea had demanded one-on-one talks with the United States but agreed this month to a multilateral format, though South Korea and other nations were left out. The two sides have never had formal diplomatic ties. 

Officials in South Korea and Washington have said the swift U.S. victory in Iraq prompted North Korea to talk. 

Pyongyang agreed to the talks after a March 8 visit March 8 by a Chinese envoy who met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, according to the Chinese newspaper Global Times, which is published by the Communist Party newspaper People's Daily. 

China also sought to reassure Pyongyang by saying its call for a security guarantee from the United States ought to be considered. U.S. officials say they won't offer a formal treaty but might provide a less formal commitment not to attack. 

Unconfirmed reports also speak of bolder moves to encourage talks by China, the biggest aid donor to the North, whose decrepit, isolated economy depends on foreign food donations to feed its people. 

China has already come far in its role of mediator, raising hopes that it will become an active, constructive diplomatic force.