MALAYSIA: The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) end meeting in Kuala Lumpar with focus on North Korea and Myanmar.

Southeast Asian nations urged North Korea on Tuesday (July 25) to rejoin six-party talks this week to resolve fears over its nuclear ambitions, offering to play host. The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) wants the six parties -- the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia -- to renew stalled talks on the fringe of an ASEAN-sponsored global security forum in Malaysia on Friday (July 28). "We call upon all the six party members since they are all here to get together to, in order to see in what way it would be best for them to resume the six party talks," said Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar said after chairing an annual meeting of his counterparts from the 10-member ASEAN grouping. The six-party talks stalled last November with North Korea objecting to a U.S. crackdown on firms it suspects of aiding Pyongyang in counterfeiting and drug-running. But all six parties, including U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sun, are due to attend the ASEAN Regional Forum, where ASEAN and world powers discuss regional security issues every year. Rice is reported to be willing to meet North Korea's Paek as part of a six-party discussion. The five other parties all want the North to give up its ambition to develop nuclear weapons. ASEAN ministers stopped short of condemning North Korea's July 5 missile tests, giving themselves room to offer the North a neutral venue. The tests brought world condemnation down on the reclusive communist regime. The prospects of six-party talks still appeared uncertain after North Korea's state news agency called Rice a "political imbecile" and news that state-owned Bank of China froze North Korea-related assets in its Macau branch. An unconfirmed report says the bank's move was in response to North Korean counterfeiting of Chinese currency. Though world affairs dominated, ASEAN also turned on its most troublesome member, military-ruled Myanmar, where generals have shown little sign of loosening their grip on power despite ASEAN's pledge to democracy, human rights and rule of law. ASEAN urged Myanmar to free opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest but did not want to expel Myanmar. "We look at the slow pace of development, of progress towards democracy and we called for Myanmar to move forward in its democratisation process in accordance with the roadmap and we also call on them to release all political prisoners so they could be engaged in the national reconciliation process," Syed Hamid said. ASEAN also agreed to accelerate and tighten Southeast Asia's economic integration, a day after global trade talks collapsed. The grouping said it might bring forward the target date for a single-market community by five years to 2015, and agreed to introduce visa-free travel among member states for social visits.

ITN Source | July 26, 2006

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