Japan, China and South Korea will soon launch a high-level economic dialogue forum to spur trade and investment and forge closer financial relations amid a rapidly changing economic landscape.

Government sources said Wednesday that the unprecedented trilateral forum, proposed by Japan, will hold its inaugural meeting at the bureau chief-level in Tokyo by the end of the month.

The specific date is now being discussed by the three nations and will be announced as early as later this week, the sources said.

Japanese officials participating in the meeting will be Shinichi Kitajima, director general of the Foreign Ministry's Economic Affairs Bureau, and other officials from the Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, the sources said.

The inauguration of the forum comes amid an accelerating trend toward forming bilateral and regional free-trade agreements in East Asia, and also in the wake of China's admission to the World Trade Organization last month.

Japan, China and South Korea -- along with Taiwan -- are the world's only major economies that have yet to conclude an FTA.

The three forum players, however, are departing from their traditional isolationist policies. Japan will sign its first FTA with Singapore this month. China and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations agreed in November to conclude an FTA within 10 years. South Korea is negotiating or considering FTAs with several countries, including Australia, Chile, New Zealand and Singapore.

ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

The government sources said that in addition to discussing ways to promote trade and investment, the trilateral forum will focus on international topics of common concern, including increasing moves toward bilateral or regional FTAs in East Asia.

The sources said, however, that the forum will not discuss the possibility of concluding an FTA among the three neighbors, at least not in the near future.

The forum's inauguration underscores more open stances on economic ties between Japan, China and South Korea.

Last year, Japan and China were involved in a festering trade row over Japan's imposition of temporary import restrictions on three farm products: shiitake mushrooms, stone leeks and rushes used in tatami floor mats. The two countries reached an agreement to settle the spat in December.

In 2000, China and South Korea experienced similar trade friction stemming from South Korea's import restrictions on Chinese garlic. In both disputes, China retaliated by slapping punitive import tariffs on industrial goods, including mobile phones, from Japan and South Korea.

Last year, Japan and South Korea were also locked in a bitter dispute over South Korea's saury fishing in waters surrounding four islands off Hokkaido that were seized by Soviet troops immediately after the end of World War II but are still claimed by Japan. South Korea sent its fishermen to the area after getting approval from Moscow, but not from Tokyo. The saury dispute was settled at the end of December.

Indeed, the sources acknowledged that although Japan wanted the trilateral forum to be inaugurated in December, it was delayed until this month because Beijing was opposed to launching it before the Sino-Japanese tit-for-tat trade row was settled.

The sources also said the forum will focus on a new round of global trade liberalization negotiations to be launched in Geneva at the end of this month under the WTO. Japan, China and South Korea might try to forge a united front over some contentious issues on the new round's agenda. They are expected to take a unified stand against further liberalization of agricultural trade, among other things.