Japan, China, S. Korea to eye N. Korea, E. Asia group plan+

BEIJING, Sept. 27 Kyodo - The foreign ministers of Japan, China and South Korea will hold a one-day meeting Monday in Shanghai, with trilateral coordination in addressing North Korea's nuclear ambitions and Japan's proposal for the creation of an ''East Asian community'' high on the agenda.

The ministers are also likely to discuss climate change, energy efficiency and
other key global and regional issues.
''With the vision of an East Asian community for the future, we will steadily
move forward step by step'' in building ''future-oriented'' relations with
other Asian economies, Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada said Sunday in
Tokyo.
''Economic integration (in the region) has developed to a considerable level,
with already a high degree of interdependence,'' Okada said on an NHK program.
''We would like to raise the level of interdependence by widening such
relations into areas such as the environment, energy, public health and
anti-influenza measures.''
The vision was unveiled by Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama when he met
Chinese President Hu Jintao in New York earlier last week.
The talks involving Okada, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi and South
Korean Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Yu Myung Hwan come as regional powers
are stepping up diplomatic drives to bring North Korea back to the stalled
six-party talks on its denuclearization.
U.S. President Barack Obama has hinted that Washington may hold one-on-one
talks with North Korea, which Pyongyang has longed for, as part of efforts to
revive the multilateral process involving the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia
and the United States.
China, the host of the six-nation talks, plans to send Premier Wen Jiabao to
Pyongyang in early October and request that North Korea return to the dialogue.
South Korean President Lee Myung Bak has proposed a ''grand bargain'' with
Pyongyang -- a deal seeking the North's complete denuclearization in a ''single
step'' in exchange for a full range of incentives.
North Korea in April declared its withdrawal from the six-party talks. But
leader Kim Jong Il told a Chinese presidential envoy on Sept. 18 that Pyongyang
aims to solve the nuclear standoff through ''bilateral and multilateral
talks.''
While bilateral talks were taken as referring to U.S.-North Korea talks, the
reference to multilateral talks remains unclear.
While Japan supports the U.S. plan for bilateral dialogue with North Korea,
Okada is expected to tell his Chinese and South Korean counterparts that Japan
will never tolerate Pyongyang's development of nuclear weapons and ballistic
missiles, and that Tokyo will not normalize its ties with Pyongyang without
solving the nuclear and missile threats and North Korea's abductions of
Japanese nationals.
Okada is scheduled to meet bilaterally with China's Yang prior to the
trilateral talks.
Along with North Korea, the three foreign ministers are also expected to
discuss ways to boost tie-ups in curbing global warming ahead of a key U.N.
climate change conference in December in Copenhagen where the world is expected
to clinch a deal on a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in
2012.
The ministers are likely to agree to help accelerate U.N. negotiations in the
run-up to the Copenhagen conference. Japan and China won international praise
when they unveiled new carbon-capping initiatives at U.N. gatherings last week.
Hatoyama announced an ambitious target to slash Japan's greenhouse gas
emissions by 25 percent from 1990 levels by 2020.
Hu said China will reduce emissions per unit of gross domestic product by a
''notable margin'' by 2020, a sign that Beijing will decouple its emissions
from economic growth.
Emissions reduction targets for developed countries for 2020 and mitigation
actions by emerging economies represent a major focus of U.N. talks for a
post-2012 framework.
The trilateral foreign ministerial meeting is aimed at laying the groundwork
for a three-way summit slated for Oct. 10 in Beijing.
==Kyodo