Two senior United States officials arrived in Beijing on Tuesday for meetings aimed at smoothing relations with Beijing after months of economic and political disputes.

The officials, Deputy Secretary of State James B. Steinberg and Jeffrey A. Bader, the senior director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council, are to hold high-level discussions with Chinese officials “about the broad U.S.-China relationship, where we are at this stage,” the State Department spokesman, Philip J. Crowley, said on Monday.

“We’ve gone through a bit of a bumpy path here,” he said, “and I think there’s an interest both within the United States and China to get back to business as usual as quickly as possible.”

The nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea are among the issues that will be discussed, Mr. Crowley said. Both China and the United States have sought to persuade North Korea to return to six-party talks over its nuclear-weapons program, and President Obama is seeking to enlist Beijing’s support for sanctions on Iran over its refusal to cooperate with international inspections of its nuclear program.