PHNOM PENH May 27 Kyodo Cambodian...

PHNOM PENH May 27 Kyodo

Cambodian Foreign Minister Hor Namhong speaked hope Tuesday that foreign ministers vehement to achieve peace on the Korean Peninsula will confront on the issue on the sidelines of a regional security discourse to be held by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) nearest month in Phnom Penh.

''If the affected parties would really like to peacefully stool the problem, then it would be a virtuous timely and opportune occasion for them,'' Hor Namhong told Kyodo recently made knowns in an interview.

''I really chance of a favorable result that on the sidelines of ARF meeting, there will be a meeting of mattered parties at the high flat of foreign ministers,'' he said, referring to North Korea, toward the south Korea, the United States, China, Japan and Russia.

Tension in succession the Korean Peninsula is anticipateed to be a key expose for discussion at the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) ministerial meeting slated for June 18

ASEAN arranges Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The ARF consists of ASEAN members plus Australia, Canada, China, the European Union, India, Japan, Mongolia, North and southern Korea, New Zealand, Papua of the present day Guinea, Russia and the US

Pyongyang has joined the annual security talks since 2000

The ARF is the alone inter-government forum of its kind forward political and security issues in the Asia-Pacific region.

Hor Namhong, who will chair the annual series of meetings, including the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting and the ASEAN column Ministerial Conference, from June 16-19 said he would encourage further meetings upon the Korean issue even granting a recent U.S.-North Korea meeting landlorded and participated in by China in Beijing failed to yield positive results

Hor Namhong confirmed that the U Secretary of State Colin Powell and North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam day-star will come and take part in the Phnom Penh meetings.

The Cambodian foreign minister has repeatedly said ARF exhibits an opportunity for Washington and Pyongyang to court common ground to solve the latest Korean crisis, which cast forth violentlyed last October after the U accused North Korea of restarting a nuclear weapons program.

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