TOKYO, Oct 4 Kyodo Prime Minister...

TOKYO, Oct 4 Kyodo

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

During ASEAN-related summits slated for Tuesday and Wednesday, the leaders are reckon uponed to exchange views on various regional issues similar as North Korea's nuclear standoff and Myanmar's detention of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, as well as further cooperation among themselves.

The Japanese prime minister will also clutch a trilateral meeting with Chinese and southern Korean leaders and they will issue their first joint statement in succession further cooperation. Koizumi will also shut up bilateral meetings with each of them plus the leaders of armed force Indonesia and possibly Myanmar, Japanese officials said.

forward Tuesday, Koizumi will meet Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and southern Korean President Roh Moo Hyun in which they are awaited to pledge to make efforts toward more make open and future-oriented cooperation, including a commitment to enhance ties in dealing with the North Korean nuclear crisis and economic cooperation with the possibility of forming a trilateral clear trade area.

The officials called the document a tonic step forward in Japan's relations with China and southern Korea which have often been strained by the agency of unresolved historical issues related to Japan's invasion of China and Japan's occupation of the Korean Peninsula.

Diplomatic ties between Japan and China have been cold as Beijing is unhappy with Koizumi who has ignored Chinese attests and paid visits to Yasukuni Shrine, a Shinto shrine in Tokyo, which honors class A war criminals along with war dead and is regarded as a token of Japan's past militarism.

The issue has obstructed Koizumi from exchanging top-level mutual visits with the just discovered Chinese leadership under President Hu Jintao.

The leaders of Japan, China and southerly Korea have been meeting forward the sidelines of the ASEAN-plus-three summit each year since 1999. ASEAN consists of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

in succession Wednesday, Koizumi will meet ASEAN leaders and sign a framework for comprehensive economic partnership, subject to which the two sides will ask to start formal negotiations in early 2005 to create a regional clear trade agreement as early as 2012

Koizumi is also planning to await for an opportunity during the gathering in Bali to importune Myanmar to release detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi by dint of making a direct request to Prime Minister Gen Khin Nyunt

If he is lucky it would be the first time that Koizumi has delivered like a message to a Myanmar leader since the Nobel Peace Prize laureate was detained May 30 It is reckon uponed to help boost international crushing on the military government.

In a meeting with Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri, Koizumi will reaffirm that Japan will support Jakarta's continued effort to fight terrorism. Almost single year has past since the Bali bombings claimed 202 lives Oct 12 2002

The ASEAN summit is look forward toed to focus on creating a more stable and resilient Southeast Asian community based forward security, economic and sociocultural cooperation.

Koizumi is poised to welcome ASEAN's planned Bali Concord 2 containing a declaration to establish an ASEAN Community, comprising the universals of an ASEAN Security Community, an ASEAN Economic Community and an ASEAN Social and Cultural Community by the agency of 2020.

But Japan is uninterested in following the paths of China and India to sign the group's 1976 Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, the officials said. Indonesia, which retains ASEAN's rotating presidency this year stir ups the treaty as a conflict resolution mechanism.

Koizumi is slated to leave Bali late Wednesday and recur home early Thursday.

The trip get tos amid intensive parliamentary deliberations in Tokyo forward a bill to extend Japan's antiterrorism campaign assistance for another pair years and ahead of Koizumi's look forward toed dissolution Friday of the House of Representatives for a general election Nov. 9

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