South Korea and Japan agreed to hold a further round of negotiations over a disputed maritime border around a string of islets on Tuesday, a Japanese embassy official said.

South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon and his Japanese counterpart, Taro Aso, reached the agreement at a meeting on the sidelines of the Asia Cooperation Dialogue, said the official.

The half-hour meeting took place as Asian foreign ministers began their two-day meeting at Doha's Four Seasons Hotel.

The agreed negotiations, which had been suspended since 2000 and will be the fifth of their kind, were set for June 12-13 in Tokyo, according to a report by South Korea's Yonhap News.

Both South Korea and Japan claim sovereignty to a series of disputed islets off the eastern coastline of the Korean Peninsula, which is controlled by South Korea and called Dokdo by Koreans and Takeshima by Japanese.

In April, ties between the two neighbors were heavily strained when Japan planned to conduct a maritime survey near Dokdo, despite South Korea's protestations. The dispute was defused after diplomats of the two nations reached a compromise during two days of negotiations in late April.

(Xinhua News Agency May 24, 2006)

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