(AFP) – Top US officials urged China Friday to use all its leverage to stop North Korea’s “destabilising” actions on the Korean peninsula, saying it was in regional and global interests.

“China has a huge stake in stability, and the continued North Korean pursuit of a nuclear armed missile capability is the enemy of stability,” a senior US administration official travelling to Seoul with Secretary of State John Kerry said. “That gives us and the Chinese a very powerful objective in common in denuclearisation.”