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SINGAPORE: Japan hopes Wednesday's informal six-party talks on the sidelines of the ASEAN post-ministerial conference will be a frank and candid exchange.
Its Foreign Ministry spokesmen, Kazuo Kodama, told reporters on Tuesday that he hopes the meeting will result in a strong political will to push for concrete steps on the verification procedures to denuclearise North Korea.
The talks involve the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia.
He said while all six parties had agreed on the framework for the verification of North Korea's push to abandon its nuclear programme, no agreement has been reached on how to carry it out.
South Korea's chief nuclear envoy, Kim Sook, met his US counterpart ahead of the talks to lay the groundwork.
US envoy Christopher Hill said: "It's very informal; we hope to have a ministerial at some point in Beijing which would be more formal. But for now, we are just going to have a conversation."
Kim said: "We have decided to continue to discuss these very important measures of verification and verification protocol.
"The ball is actually in the North Korean court because they have already received the draft of the verification protocol. Where we are now is to conclude this issue as soon as possible."
ASEAN is also looking forward to a positive outcome. The ten-member grouping's secretary-general, Surin Pitsuwan, said: "We all feel that we would like to support and see the process of denuclearisation going as smoothly as possible."
In the last meeting about a week earlier, all parties had agreed to the disabling of North Korea's nuclear plant by October and to allow on-site visits by US and other foreign experts.
However, the six-party talks met with an obstacle recently when Japan and South Korea feud over disputed islets in the Sea of Japan. It remains to be seen how the bilateral dispute could impact the six-party discussion, which has had its fair share of ups and downs.
- CNA/so
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