Japan's Nakasone heads to Thailand for ASEAN-related meetings+

TOKYO, July 21 Kyodo -
Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone left Japan for Thailand on Tuesday to attend
a series of meetings involving the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and
their partners, with North Korea and other regional concerns as well as the
world economy to be on the agenda.

An annual meeting of the 27-member ASEAN Regional Forum, a regional security
forum that includes North Korea and the United States, is among the events
Nakasone will attend at the resort island of Phuket, where he hopes to press
other participants to fully implement a U.N. Security Council sanctions
resolution adopted in response to Pyongyang's second nuclear test conducted in
May.
In a sign of protest over such pressure from the international community, North
Korea has said it will not send Foreign Minister Pak Ui Chun to the ARF talks
and named Pak Kun Gwangi as ''ambassador at large'' to represent the country
instead, according to senior Thai officials.
The ARF is the only regional security dialogue forum which is attended by North
Korea's foreign minister and includes all member countries involved in the
six-party talks aimed to denuclearize North Korea.
On whether the so-called five-party talks without North Korea will be convened,
Nakasone said there are ''no concrete prospects.'' But he noted that it is
''one way'' to seek progress in the stalled nuclear negotiations.
As for bilateral talks to be held on the sidelines of the ASEAN-related
meetings, arrangements are under way for Nakasone to meet with U.S. Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton as well as with his Thai counterpart Kasit Piromya,
Japanese Foreign Ministry officials said.
Nakasone's four-day visit to Thailand comes amid a turbulent domestic political
situation, with unpopular Prime Minister Taro Aso setting out for a House of
Representatives election in late August despite pressure among his ruling
Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers that he should resign.
''Despite the dissolution of the lower house (for a general election), this
does not mean that the Cabinet will end today. I still have my work and
responsibility as a foreign minister,'' Nakasone told a press conference
Tuesday.
''I would especially like to continue approaching other countries over issues
involving North Korea,'' he added.
In the series of ASEAN-related meetings, held annually to prepare for the
leaders' summit talks later in the year, participants are expected to discuss
how to address the global economic crisis, the new strain of influenza, and
such regional concerns as North Korea's nuclear threats and the situation in
Myanmar, the Japanese officials said.
On Wednesday, Nakasone will meet his counterparts from ASEAN, China and South
Korea under the ASEAN-plus-three framework and attend an East Asia Summit
informal foreign ministerial meeting, which will be followed by talks between
Japan and ASEAN foreign ministers.
The ARF will be held Thursday, placing specific emphasis on security issues
with a view to adopting a statement that outlines the forum's vision through
2020, they said.
Under the ''Vision Statement,'' the forum, in order to achieve its goal of
enhancing the regional security environment, is expected to reaffirm its
three-step evolutionary approach -- starting with the promotion of confidence
building and moving toward preventive diplomacy before eventually developing
conflict-resolution mechanisms.
It will also reaffirm its intention to enhance cooperation accompanied by
concrete actions, they added.
Japan, for its part, plans to support such an action-oriented mechanism and
call attention to its active contributions in such areas of disaster relief,
they said.
The 10-member ASEAN comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia,
Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
The East Asia Summit meeting involves the 10 ASEAN members plus Japan, China
and South Korea as well as Australia, New Zealand and India. Meanwhile, the
ARF, launched in 1994, brings together these 16 countries as well as Canada,
North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Sri Lanka, the United States, the European Union
and others.
This means that the ARF includes all member countries in the six-party talks,
which involve the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States.
The five parties other than North Korea are struggling to break an impasse in
the negotiations which have been stalled since December.
North Korea has said it will not take part in the six-way talks in protest over
a U.N. Security Council statement condemning its rocket launch in April, which
was widely seen as a disguised missile test.
==Kyodo