Japan, the United States and South Korea are arranging a meeting of their foreign ministers next month in Brunei on the sidelines of a regional security forum to confirm their unity on the North Korean nuclear and missile threat, government sources revealed Saturday.
Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida hopes to discuss how to bring the North back to long-stalled talks on denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula in his meetings with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se during the ASEAN Regional Forum on July 2, the sources said.
If realized, it will be their first such meeting since last September, when the foreign ministers of the three countries held talks in New York. Separately, their respective defense ministers held a trilateral meeting June 1 in Singapore.
Kishida is also willing to meet bilaterally with Kerry in Brunei, following their talks in April. He will also explore the possibility of holding one-on-one discussions with Yun in light of Japan's chilled ties with South Korea over historical and territorial issues, the sources said.
The three countries are scheduled to hold senior working-level talks Wednesday in Washington, apparently to pave the way for the ministerial meeting at the security forum of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.