TOYAKO, Japan (AFP) - US President George W. Bush was to meet separately Wednesday with leaders of India, China and South Korea, with nuclear disputes, trade rows, and the fight over climate change high on the agenda.

Bush's talks with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Chinese President Hu Jintao and South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak will come as the US leader wraps up a trip to Japan for a Group of Eight (G8) summit.

The stalled US-India atomic cooperation pact, six-country diplomacy aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear programmes, and hard-fought efforts to ratify a US-South Korea free trade pact were to be the key issues, US officials said.

The leaders were also expected to discuss Tuesday's pledges from the G8 to seek to halve carbon emissions blamed for climate change by 2050, as well as mid-term cuts including from major developing nations like China and India.

The unpopular US president, who has fewer than 200 days left before he leaves office, hoped Singh would bring word that he is ready to try to win Indian lawmakers' approval for the civilian nuclear energy pact, aides said.

"It could be that he's ready to move forward -- but it also could just as likely be that they have a little bit more work to do," Bush spokeswoman Dana Perino said on the eve of the breakfast talks.

She also warned that the US Congress has a heavy workload and "a limited number of legislative days" in which to approve the deal. India's communists meanwhile pulled out of Singh's governing coalition in opposition to the deal.

Singh argues the 2005 pact -- which would see India entering the fold of global nuclear commerce after being shut out for decades -- is crucial for India's energy security, but foes see too-close ties to the United States.

In the meetings with Hu and Lee, Bush was to focus on efforts to craft ways to verify North Korea's June 26 accounting of its nuclear programmes, including securing access to key officials and facilities, the White House said.

Officials from the six countries that are party to the talks will meet on Thursday in China -- one month to the day before Bush's order to take North Korea off a US terrorism blacklist goes into effect on August 10.

Bush's talks with Hu will be his first since announcing he would attend the August 8 opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, rebuffing activists' calls to shun the gala over China's rights record and crackdown in Tibet.

"I don't need the Olympics to express my concerns. I've been doing so," the US president said Sunday, adding that he would raise the issue of political and religious freedoms with Hu.

In the meeting with Lee, Bush was to focus on "our efforts to get our free trade agreement through our respective legislatures," US National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said Tuesday.

Recent South Korean protests over the resumption of US beef imports were also likely to come up, the spokesman said.

"But we have resolved that issue, and US beef is once again on sale on South Korea store shelves," he stressed.

On Monday, Lee sacked the agriculture minister, the minister for health and welfare and the education minister to try to end mass protests against the beef agreement, a presidential spokesman said.

His administration's agreement in April to resume US beef imports, suspended in 2003 following a US mad cow case, sparked weeks of mass street protests over supposed health concerns.

Seoul went back to Washington to secure extra health safeguards under the beef deal before officially resuming the imports late last month.

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