SEOUL, June 13 (UPI) -- Representatives of South Korea, the United States and Japan will meet in Washington next week to discuss North Korea, sources told Yonhap News.
The South Korean news agency said the meeting from next Tuesday through Thursday, which is yet to be announced by Washington and Tokyo, will be among the top diplomats of the three countries in charge of issues relating to the Communist country. They are South Korea's Cho Tae-yong, Glyn Davies of the United States and Shinsuke Sugiyama of Japan.
North Korea's long-range missile and nuclear tests in violation of U.N. resolutions and other recent threats have raised tensions on the Korean Peninsula affecting South Korea and Japan, both of which are close allies of the United States.
The stalled Six-Party talks on North Korea's denuclearization are also among pending issues.
The Washington meeting would be the first high-level one among the three nations in six months, Yonhap reported.
"It would be representative Cho's first meeting with the U.S. and Japanese officials. So, it is sort of an introductory session," a diplomatic source told Yonhap.
Besides North Korea, other issues likely to figure at the meeting would include the results of the recent meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping, the source said.
The two Koreas were to have held high-level talks this week designed to ease bilateral tensions, but they were called off Tuesday in a dispute over who would lead their respective delegations.
The six-party talks on the North's denuclearization, which have been stalled since December 2008, involve the two Koreas, Japan, China, Russia and the United States.
