US Secretary Rice meet with NKorean for margin of ASEAN forum

Rice is expected to meet North Korean Foreign Minister Pak Ui-chun in an informal meeting of the top diplomats of the six countries negotiating Pyongyang‘s denuclearization program, spokesman Sean McCormack said on Friday.

China, Japan and Russia, the other four states involved in the six-party talks, McCormack said. It’s really a meeting to review where the six-party process is at the moment," the spokesman added.

All country Ministers are going to be in Singapore, Why not has an informal gathering?

He said playing down expectations of any substantial outcome from the meeting. 27-member ASEAN Regional Forum which includes nations from Asia as well as the European Union and the United States, meets in Singapore on 24^th July at the end of a meeting of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Cormack said the six-way meeting on the ARF sidelines was not aimed at generating "some specific negotiated outcome, for the Ministers to be able to assess the work of their heads of delegations to the six-party talks," he said.