Asian and European foreign ministers urged North Korea on Saturday to return to talks on its nuclear arms programme "without any further delay" as concerns grew that Pyongyang was preparing for an atomic test. Nearly a year has passed since a third round of six-country talks on the crisis ended inconclusively in Beijing. North Korea declared in February that it had nuclear arms and would stay away from the talks indefinitely - a matter the foreign ministers said was a cause for "deep concern".
"(The ministers) strongly urged the DPRK (North Korea) to return to the negotiating table of the six-party talks without any further delay, and to make a strategic decision so as to achieve the denuclearisation of the (Korean) peninsula in a peaceful manner through dialogue," said a chairman's statement issued at the end of a two-day Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM).
ASEM, one of the few international groupings not to include the United States, comprises 38 countries accounting for 60 percent of world trade.
A third round of nuclear talks among the two Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and China took place in June 2004.
"Over the past 10 months, the six-party talks have not been held and in the meantime, it is highly likely that nuclear weapons development or missile development has proceeded steadily," Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura told a news conference wrapping up the ASEM gathering.
The topic came up again when Machimura held talks with China's Li Zhaoxing and South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon, where the three agreed on the need to resume the six-party talks as soon as possible.
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