WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States has "a lot of damage to repair" to its standing around the world after eight years of President George W Bush, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Tuesday. "The (new) approach to the world is one that we know is in the interests of our country going forward, and I have had that reinforced time and again with the all phone calls that I've been making," Clinton told reporters. "There is a great exhilaration of breath going on around the world as people express their appreciation for the new direction that is being set and the team that is being put together by the president," she said. She recalled that President Barack Obama's administration views defence, diplomacy and development aid as the pillars of the new foreign policy. "I don't think you can really conclude anything other than this is a united effort. We have a lot of damage to repair," Clinton told reporters at the State Department. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton said Tuesday it was "essential" for the United States to pursue multilateral nuclear disarmament talks with North Korea. "With respect to North Korea, the six-party talks are essential," Clinton told reporters when asked if her testimony at a Senate hearing this month indicated there were other ways to engage Pyongyang on disarmament. During the hearing on January 13, Clinton said the Obama administration was reviewing the six-party disarmament negotiations but called them a "vehicle" to pressure North Korea into changing its behaviour. Clinton's comments on Tuesday were a stronger indication that the United States will continue the talks, pursued under president George W. Bush's administration, that also involve the two Koreas, Japan, China and Russia. Pyongyang in 2007 signed a six-nation disarmament pact, which calls for the scrapping of its nuclear weapons in return for aid, normalized relations with the United States and Japan and a formal peace pact on the Korean peninsula. 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 The North frequently demands verification that US nuclear weapons have been withdrawn from South Korea.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.