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TOKYO - Visiting South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak and Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso held talks on Sunday, with simmering tensions over North Korea's nuclear programmes topping the agenda.
The summit comes as Pyongyang steps up its confrontational rhetoric amid global suspicions that the regime is preparing to fire more missiles and stage a military exercise off its east coast.
Regional tensions spiked after North Korea last month carried out an underground nuclear test for the second time, followed by missile launches.
The two leaders are likely to discuss the implementation of UN sanctions against North Korea, which call for tougher inspections of cargo suspected of containing banned missile- and nuclear-related items, officials have said.
Lee and Aso are expected to reiterate their calls on China to help put pressure on North Korea to heed the wishes of the international community and to drop its nuclear ambitions.
Lee is also expected to discuss his recent talks with US President Barack Obama, with whom he mulled five-way talks with China, Russia and Japan about putting pressure on Pyongyang.
China is North Korea's main ally and has always favoured cautious diplomacy towards Pyongyang, wary of any moves that could push the Stalinist regime to collapse and potentially send millions of refugees streaming over its border.
However, six-way talks including North Korea made little progress on its nuclear disarmament, with Pyongyang detonating nuclear explosions in 2006 and on May 25 this year.
Tokyo and Seoul have led the push in East Asia against the North's increasingly antagonistic stance, with Pyongyang repeatedly warning of a military confrontation.
North Korea has vowed to build more nuclear bombs and to start a new weapons programme based on uranium enrichment in response to the UN sanctions.
North Korea on Sunday renewed its sabre-rattling, threatening to bolster its nuclear deterrence against the United States, the close ally of South Korea and Japan.
"We will strengthen our nuclear deterrence further for our self-defence to cope with outright US nuclear threats and nuclear war attempts," Pyongyang's ruling communist party newspaper Rodong Sinmun said.
Rodong said the North's nuclear drive could be justified by the "US introduction of nuclear weapons into South Korea," despite the denial by Seoul and Washington that there are US nuclear weapons on South Korean soil.
Meanwhile, a US Navy destroyer was last week reported to be trailing a North Korean ship that was potentially carrying arms and possibly headed for Myanmar. Myanmar has dismissed the reports as "rumours."
Lee's one-day trip to Tokyo is part of "shuttle summit diplomacy," a system that sees the leaders visit each other twice a year for talks on issues including diplomatic and economic matters.
They are also expected to hear from a group of Japanese and South Korean business leaders on ways to improve bilateral economic relations.
Other topics on the agenda are likely to be efforts towards the resumption of talks on a free trade agreement, global recession and helping Afghanistan and Pakistan in their battle against militants.
- AFP/ir
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