President Obama made calls to a handful of top business leaders over the weekend, a White House official said Sunday, as part of effort to build support for his approach to averting the fiscal cliff.

In conversations that came during his weekend of travel to and in Asia, Obama stressed "the need to find a balanced deficit reduction solution that protects the middle class and continues to move our economy forward," the official said.

Obama spoke to Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett, Apple CEO Tim Cook, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, Boeing CEO Jim McNerney and Costco CEO Craig Jelinek, the official said.

The president had a similar conversation with business leaders including the CEOs of General Electric, Honeywell and American Express at the White House on Wednesday. Some in the business community noted the conspicuous absence of CEOs of investment firms at the meeting, but Buffett and Dimon are both key figures on Wall Street and beyond.

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