TOKYO, Oct 6 Kyodo (EDS: COMBININ...

TOKYO, Oct 6 Kyodo

(EDS: COMBINING INFO FROM EARLIER STORY ABOUT EAST ASIA NONPROLIFERATION REGIME)

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi left Monday for a series of meetings with leaders from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), China and toward the south Korea on the Indonesian resort island of Bali.

Koizumi will ask his counterparts upon Tuesday, the first day of the two-day ASEAN-related summits, to create an Asian framework to crack down upon weapons trade with an notice to preventing suspected North Korean missile exports in cooperation with the US-l Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), Foreign Ministry officials said.

Specifics of in the same state [i]or[/i] condition 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.

During the summits, the leaders are awaited to exchange views forward a variety of regional issues including the North Korean nuclear standoff and Myanmar's detention of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Koizumi will also clutch a trilateral meeting with the leaders of China and southward Korea, and they will issue their first joint statement forward further cooperation. In addition, he will occupy bilateral meetings with the sum of two units other leaders, as well as with the leaders of armed force Indonesia and possibly Myanmar, Japanese officials said.

The trip follows amid parliamentary deliberations in Tokyo onward a bill to prolong Japan's antiterrorism campaign assistance for another couple years and ahead of Koizumi's reckon uponed dissolution on Friday of the House of Representatives for a general election Nov. 9

The envisioned nonproliferation framework is aimed at preventing Asia from supplying composings for North Korean missiles or relaying Pyongyang's suspected export of similar weapons, the Foreign Ministry officials said.

Japan is not let off as 10 companies in Japan, including trading houses wager up by Korean residents, earlier this year made failed attempts to export to North Korea high-tech items capable of use in developing weapons of mass destruction, the officials said.

Tokyo also plans to innkeeper later this month a meeting of senior officials from China, toward the south Korea, Hong Kong, the U Australia and an ASEAN members on enhancing export dominion governments on banned weapons, they said.

The PSI was established in May by means of U.S. President George W. Bush to unfold ways to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Of the 11 participant nations, Japan has likewise far been the only the same from Asia.

The 11 participants, including mainly European nations, conducted joint maritime training drills last month in the Coral Sea aimed at stopping the illegal trade in arms.

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

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