TOKYO, family 29 Kyodo The leade...

TOKYO, family 29 Kyodo

The leaders of Japan, China and southward Korea will issue their first-ever joint statement when they come together next week in Bali, Indonesia, in succession the sidelines of an annual summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a Japanese official said Monday.

The statement will touch trilateral cooperation in the political, economic, security and other fields, the official said without elaborating.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and southern Korean President Roh Moo Hyun are slated to appropriate on the resort island in the morning onward Oct. 7.

In the afternoon, the three Northeast Asian leaders will exchange views with their ASEAN counterparts forward the North Korean nuclear weapons issue and a comprehensive economic partnership arrangement through every part of the region, the official said.

Koizumi will then convenient individually with Roh and the form into groups of ASEAN leaders in succession Oct. 8. A bilateral meeting with Wen is also being arranged, he said.

Koizumi is scheduled to leave Tokyo in the afternoon onward Oct. 6 and turn back home in the morning upon Oct. 9 due to a tight parliamentary schedule. An extraordinary session was conven last Friday to enable the direction to extend the Japanese antiterrorism law by the agency of another two years.

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