The chief nuclear negotiators of the Republic of Korea (ROK), the United States and Japan to the six-party talks will meet in Seoul on Saturday to discuss strategies on how to re-open the multilateral talks, reported ROK Yonhap News Agency.

Participants in the meeting will be ROK's Deputy Foreign Minister Song Min-soon, US Assistant Secretary of State-designate Christopher Hill and Kenichiro Sasae, chief of the Japanese Foreign Ministry's Asia-Oceania Bureau, Yonhap quoted a source of the ROK Government as reporting.

The three countries have usually met for such strategy consultations to co-ordinate their standings on the nuclear issue.

Since August 2003, China, the United States, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), Russia, the ROK and Japan have held three rounds of talks in Beijing aimed at peacefully resolving the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula.

Pyongyang refused to attend the fourth round scheduled for last September, citing hostile US policy.
 
However, the DPRK leader Kim Jong-il told a visiting Chinese envoy on Monday that his government would return to the negotiating table if certain conditions are met, though he did not detail them.

"It is inappropriate for the DPRK to attach conditions to returning to the talks," the ROK Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon said yesterday.

"The DPRK must come to the talks unconditionally and then it can present its differences and all the parties can try to strike a deal through negotiations."

Japanese Ambassador Toshiyuki Takano said in Seoul that the three allies will try to work out remaining differences, but did not elaborate.

However US Ambassador Hill warned this week that Pyongyang could try to exploit divisions if the nations taking part in multilateral discussions do not adopt a unified approach. The other countries involved are China, Russia and the DPRK.

(China Daily February 24, 2005)