Foreign ministers from three major stakeholders in the North Korea nuclear crisis met on the sidelines of an ASEAN meeting yesterday to find ways of breaking a stalemate between Pyongyang and Washington.
The ministers from China, Japan and South Korea are expected to issue a joint declaration that will include a pledge to step up cooperation on the North Korean issue, South Korean spokesman Kim Hyun Joo told reporters before the talks began.
Details of the agreement were not immediately available.
The talks among the Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing (李肇星) and his Japanese and South Korean counterparts, Yoriko Kaw-aguchi and Yoon Young-Kwan, were held ahead of Wednesday's meeting of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), Asia-Pacific's top security grouping.
The ministers' meeting focused on North Korea's standoff with the US over the Stalinist regime's nuclear program, the region's biggest security concern, officials said.
The meeting comes as China, a major supplier of fuel and food aid to North Korea and Pyongyang's closest ally, is facing increasing pressure from Washington as well as Seoul and Tokyo to put pressure on the North.
Washington is hoping to cut off the regime's economic lifeline, analysts say, by stopping its alleged sales of missile technology and drug-trafficking operations.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell was due to arrive for the ARF meeting yesterday night armed with a joint statement released on Friday by the US, Japan and South Korea vowing to crack down on Pyongyang's alleged criminal activities and deal with its nuclear weapons development.
Meanwhile, North Korea warned yesterday that a blockade by the US and its allies against the communist state could lead to war and Japan would not be safe from "the flames of war."
Pyongyang's main state-run newspaper Rodong Sinmun yesterday charged that the US is "laying an international siege to the North and putting a blockade against it as a premeditated scheme to start a new war on the Korean Peninsula."
North Korea will take "physical retaliation," including "all means and methods an independent country can take," once it concludes that the recent moves by the allies violate its sovereignty, Rodong said in a commentary monitored by South Korean news agency Yonhap.
"There is no guarantee that this blockade will not lead to such a serious condition as a full-scale war," said Rodong. "If war breaks out between the North and the US, it will not be limited to the Korean Peninsula but all the areas where aggressors are lurking will become our targets."
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