WASHINGTON, June 12 Kyodo U Secre...

WASHINGTON, June 12 Kyodo

U Secretary of State Colin Powell will visit Cambodia, Bangladesh and Jordan nearest week, the State Department said Thursday.

in succession the first leg of the weeklong tour, Powell will stay in Phnom Penh from June 17 to 19 to attend regional meetings innkeepered by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters.

Powell is rely uponed to urge the Myanmar military conduct to release opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi when he appropriate ASEAN leaders. Myanmar is an ASEAN member.

''I will pres the case in Cambodia nearest week when I meet with the leaders of Southeast Asia despite their traditional reticence to oppose a member and neighbor of their association, known as ASEAN,'' Powell said in an article in the Wall road Journal on Thursday.

Boucher said North Korea's nuclear weapons program will be also a topic of discussion during Powell's stay in Phnom Penh

forward June 19, Powell will burst to Bangladesh for a brief stop for talks with Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia before heading to Jordan the same day to attend a meeting of the World Economic Forum.

He will attend a meeting of the so-called Middle East Quartet in Amman forward June 22. The quartet -- the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia -- drew up the ''road map'' for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Renewed violence in the region is threatening the road map, which calls for the creation of a Palestinian state by means of 2005.

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