Japan, China, S. Korea to chart regional strategies

Asian Political News, June 14, 2004

BEIJING, June 11 Kyodo

Foreign ministers from Japan, China and South Korea will work out ways to ease regional issues that could include North Korea's nuclear ambitions, environmental protection and political differences within the threesome at a trilateral meeting on June 22, a Chinese Foreign Ministry official said Friday.

Foreign ministers from the three countries will meet in Qingdao to move on issues they first discussed last year, said the Foreign Ministry official, who spoke at a background briefing.

''They will talk about a strategy implementation, in other words, come out with a road map,'' the ministry official said.

The talks are based on a statement signed by Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, Chinese President Hu Jintao and South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun in Indonesia last October.

Tripartite meetings precede six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons, which have pitted North Korea and the United States against each other in a stalemate. Those talks could resume as early as June 23.

The three ministers -- Yoriko Kawaguchi from Japan, Li Zhaoxing from China and Ban Ki Moon from South Korea -- will meet during the June 21-22 Asian Cooperation Dialogue involving 22 countries, such as Bangladesh, India, Kazakstan and Thailand. The dialogue agenda, though flexible, is expected to cover energy sector cooperation, agriculture and e-commerce among other resource and trade issues, the Chinese official said.

China also will meet informally with members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations on June 21.

During the meetings, Chinese leaders will make counterterrorism work a priority, in the wake of attacks on its citizens in Afghanistan on Thursday, the official said.

''As far as counterterrorism is concerned, it has caught the world's attention,'' he said. ''I'm sure various countries in the meetings will touch upon this question.''

But counterterrorism will not be a focus of the dialogue, he said.

After the informal, but closed-door, meetings, the leaders will issue two joint statements, the official said. One will be an energy sector framework document called the Qingdao Initiative, the other a declaration on Asian cooperation.

A representative of Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra first raised the idea of an Asian Cooperation Dialogue in 2000, at an international conference of political parties.