Pyongyang Active Diplomacy Steals Spotlight at ASEAN Forum

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, August 01, 2002

Pyongyang Active Diplomacy Steals Spotlight at ASEAN Forum

Asian ministers rounded off the annual security talks with their Western counterparts here Wednesday, with Pyongyang's active diplomacy stealing the spotlight at the one-day gathering.

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Asian ministers rounded off the annual security talks with their Western counterparts here Wednesday, with Pyongyang's active diplomacy stealing the spotlight at the one-day gathering.

The 9th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum (ARF) covered a wide range of security issues, traditional and non-traditional, including the Korean Peninsula, South Asia and terrorism.

Host Brunei Foreign Minister Mohamed Bolkiah told reporters after the meeting that the ARF is "a particular occasion" to discuss terrorism and the ministers have agreed to take a number of positive steps to fight "this major non-conventional security concern."

The ministers approved a statement on measures against terrorist financing, including freezing terrorist assets and strengthening international cooperation in information exchange.

"In the interests of global peace and security, the participants in the ARF are determined to stop the financing of terrorism," the ministers declared in the statement.

The ministers also urged India and Pakistan to resume dialogue and welcomed the readiness of Seoul and Pyongyang to restart the inter-Korean dialogue.

The separate meetings between Paek Num Sun, foreign minister ofthe Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), and his counterparts from the United States and Japan held the spotlight at the event.

At the beginning of the ARF, US Secretary of State Colin Powellhad "a 15-minute informal chat" with Paek, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

Powell later told reporters the brief contact was "a good meeting" but that he did not expect another "one-on-one" meeting with Paek here.

According to Boucher, Powell told Paek that he noted the recentstatements the DPRK had made.

Powell was referring to the DPRK's regret on its naval clash with South Korea last month and calls for resumption of dialogue with the South.

"In any future discussions, Washington would want to emphasize a variety of matters including proliferation, mutual commitment made under the Agreed Framework and conventional forces," Powell was quoted as saying.

The Agreed Framework is a deal clinched in 1994 on the construction of two light nuclear reactors for the DPRK which promised to freeze its nuclear weapons development program.

As for follow-on meetings or visits to the DPRK, Powell was quoted as saying Washington would "consider the statements the North Koreans made."

The Powell-Paek contact is the first between the US and DPRK foreign ministers since Paek met Powell's predecessor, Madeleine Albright, on the sidelines of the Bangkok ASEAN meetings two yearsago.

Shortly after the end of the ARF, Paek held a 30-minute meetingwith Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi, the first high-level contact between the two countries in two years.

The DPRK and Japan started talks on normalization of bilateral ties years ago but the process was suspended in October 2000.

In a joint statement issued after the meeting, the two ministers said they agreed to "make serious efforts to solve various issues, including issues concerning the settlement of the past, in order to realize the normalization of relations as early as possible."

They also agreed to hold a director-general level meeting in August in order to discuss issues concerning the normalization of bilateral relations and concerns of mutual interest.

On Thursday, ASEAN and its 10 dialogue partners will hold the Post Ministerial Conferences (PMC).

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