Asem ministers urge N Korea to resume talks

Nearly a year has passed since a third round of six-country talks on the crisis ended inconclusively in Beijing.

North Korea declared in Febru-ary that it possessed 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.

Meanwhile, European efforts to secure the freedom of Myanmar's opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi are being undermined by a lack of political pressure from Asian nations, a European official said Saturday.

The European Union used a meeting of Asian and European foreign ministers in Kyoto, Japan to demand the military junta release Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest and free 19 political prisoners.

But a senior European official regretted that Asian nations were not applying similar pressure.