Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi left Monday for a series of meetings with leaders from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, China and South Korea on the Indonesian resort island of Bali.
Koizumi will ask his counterparts Tuesday, the first of two days of ASEAN-related summits, to create an Asian framework to crack down on weapons trade with an eye to preventing suspected North Korean missile exports in cooperation with the U.S.-led Proliferation Security Initiative, Foreign Ministry officials said.
Specifics of such Asian cooperation will be discussed in a meeting in November of officials from the so-called "ASEAN-plus-three" grouping plus the United States and Australia, the officials said.