Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Katsuya Okada plans to discuss North Korea's nuclear program and alleged March sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan at an ASEAN forum this week, dpa cited the minister's spokesman as saying today. Okada arrives in Hanoi on Wednesday to attend a meeting of the 10- member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a week-long diplomatic gathering focused on security issues in Southeast Asia. "We hope that the ASEAN members take the Cheonan sinking very seriously," the spokesman, Hidenobu Sobashima, told reporters at a press briefing Tuesday in Hanoi. "We also have a concern vis-à-vis North Korea's nuclear program [and] we aim to achieve the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula." Sobashima said multilateral discussions at the ASEAN forum should build on a unanimously adopted July 9 United Nations Security Council statement that condemned the Cheonan sinking. The UN statement did not explicitly blame North Korea for the sinking. Earlier on Tuesday, a Japanese newspaper reported that Japan had proposed a bilateral meeting with North Korea, according to the Korean broadcasting service Arirang. Japan had proposed a discussion of North Korea's "past kidnapping of Japanese citizens and the recent deadly sinking of the South Korean warship, Cheonan," Arirang reported on its website Tuesday. Spokesman Sobashima declined to comment on the story, referring reporters to the Japanese foreign minister's July 9 remarks about the UN Security Council's statement on the Cheonan sinking. "Japan strongly urges North Korea to listen seriously to this concerted message of the international community and to refrain from taking action that would negatively affect the situation," Okada said in remarks posted on his website. Sobashima said Tuesday that no bilateral meeting had been scheduled between Japan and North Korea in Hanoi this week. "We'll make an announcement if something happens," Sobashima said.
