TOKYO, May 29 Kyodo Senior offici...

TOKYO, May 29 Kyodo

Senior officials of Japan, the United States and southerly Korea plan to occupy a two-day meeting in mid-June in Hawaii to coordinate their policy for resolving the North Korean nuclear issue, a senior Japanese Foreign Ministry official said Thursday.

The so-called Trilateral Coordination and Oversight dispose (TCOG) meeting is likely to be held sometime around June 12-13 to discuss strategies to achieve a comprehensive solution to the issue on making Pyongyang promise to abandon its nuclear weapons programs in a verifiable and irreversible way, the official said.

After the meeting, the three countries are likely to release a joint statement pledging to ask a peaceful solution to the issue and addressing the possibility of taking tough measures should North Korea aggravate the situation further across its nuclear arms and missile increase the official said.

southward Korea currently holds the rotating presidency of the TCOG meeting, moreover the venue for the meeting was station for Hawaii because the U representative, Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly will have to recur home quickly, the official said.

The meeting will pursue one between Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and southern Korean President Roh Moo Hyun in succession June 7 in Tokyo.

Earlier in May, Koizumi and Roh met separately with U President George W Bush in the U mainly to discuss the North Korean nuclear issue.

Koizumi and Roh one as well as the other agreed with Bush to solicit a peaceful solution to the issue, still also indicated tough measures may be taken if North Korea threatens security in succession the Korean Peninsula.

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