Yonhap news agency said Shinsuke Sugiyama, who in January became Tokyo's top envoy for frozen six-party nuclear talks, will meet his Seoul counterpart Wi Sung-Lac to discuss a response to the North's uranium enrichment efforts.

Sugiyama will also meet South Korean diplomats to discuss ways to resume the long-stalled negotiations on the communist nation during a three-day visit beginning Monday, Yonhap said, citing a foreign ministry official in Seoul.

The South's foreign ministry declined to comment.

The North sparked regional security fears in November when it disclosed an apparently functional uranium enrichment plant to visiting US experts.

Pyongyang claimed it was a peaceful energy project but experts said it could easily be reconfigured to produce weapons-grade uranium-- giving the North a second way to make atomic bombs on the top of its existing plutonium stockpile.

The six-party aid-for-disarmament talks, grouping the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States, has been at a standstill since Pyongyang walked out in April 2009 and staged its second nuclear test a month later.

Japan and South Korea's foreign ministers last month pledged to work with Washington to persuade the UN Security Council to take up the issue of the North's uranium enrichment programme with a view to possible punishment.

Seoul wants the Security Council to address the uranium programme before any new six-party talks, but the attempt last month to publish a UN report criticising the North flopped amid opposition from Beijing.

del.icio.us	Digg	Reddit
YahooMyWeb	Google	Facebook

Memory Foam Mattress Review

SPACE MEDIA NETWORK PROMOTIONS Solar Energy Solutions Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison ... Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News