Rice to meet North Korean counterpart on margin of ASEAN forum

WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will meet her North Korean counterpart for the first time on the sidelines of next week's ASEAN Regional Forum, a State Department spokesman has said.

Rice is expected to meet North Korean Foreign Minister Pak Ui-chun in an informal meeting of the top diplomats of the six countries negotiating Pyongyang's denuclearization program, spokesman Sean McCormack said on Thursday.

Rice had no plans for a bilateral meeting with Pak, but will see him in the meeting with her counterparts from South Korea, China, Japan and Russia, the other four states involved in the six-party talks, McCormack said.

"It's really a meeting to review where the six-party process is at the moment," the spokesman added.

"All the ministers are going to be in Singapore. Why not have an informal gathering?" he said, playing down expectations of any substantial outcome from the meeting.

The 27-member ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), which includes nations from Asia as well as the European Union and the United States, meets in Singapore on July 24 at the end of a meeting of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

McCormack said the six-way meeting on the ARF sidelines was not aimed at generating "some specific negotiated outcome."

"It is a good opportunity for the ministers to be able to assess the work of their heads of delegations to the six-party talks."

South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported that the meeting, the highest-level gathering since six-party talks began in 2003, would be held next Wednesday.