Six countries plan Asian naval security drill

TOKYO, May 24 (Reuters) Six countries including Japan, China, South Korea and the United States are to hold a series of joint maritime exercises, just weeks after Tokyo and Seoul were locked in a tense stand-off over some tiny disputed islands.

Japan, China, South Korea, the United States, Canada and Russia will launch naval exercises in the Japan Sea and East China Sea to halt the spread of weapons of mass destruction, starting on Saturday, Japanese Coastguard officials said.

The officials said it would be the first time China took part in such joint naval exercises.

In October 2004, Japan hosted the US-led Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), Asia's first naval exercise, in the backyard of North Korea.

Australia, Japan, Singapore, Thailand and New Zealand are the only countries from the Asia-Pacific to publicly support the PSI, although the group says it has the support of more than 60 nations.

China and South Korea have been reluctant to join the initiative, apparently to avoid offending North Korea - the reclusive communist state with nuclear ambitions that is an unspoken target of the PSI.

The Japanese Coastguard officials would not say whether the planned joint maritime exercises were focused on North Korea.

''The exercises are primarily aimed at preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction,'' one of the officials said.

A US embassy spokesman in Tokyo said exercises would ''include ship boarding and searches along the lines of PSI''.

Japan and South Korea defused a possible showdown in April when Japan agreed to call off a maritime survey and South Korea put off registering the Korean names of some underwater features near the disputed group of islets which sit about the same distance from the two countries' mainland.

The joint exercises will also be held in the East China Sea where Japan and China are in dispute over gas fields and sovereignty of a separate group of small islands.

REUTERS SHR PM1549