Asian ministers call for ceasefire in WAsia

KUALA LUMPUR, July 26 (Reuters) Asian foreign ministers criticised Israel today for its ''apparently deliberate'' air strike on a UN post in Lebanon, bringing the West Asia war squarely onto the agenda of their annual security forum.

China, South Korea and Japan joined the 10 members of the Association of South East Asian Nations for talks at which they called for an immediate ceasefire in the West Asia.

One Chinese national was among the four UN observers who died in yesterday's attack on a post in south Lebanon.

''The ministers were deeply shocked and distressed by the apparently deliberate targeting by the Israeli Defence Forces of the United Nations observer post...,'' said a statement from the Malaysian foreign minister, who chaired the meeting.

''They called for an immediate ceasefire and urged the international community and the United Nations Security Council to get all parties in the conflict to adhere to the ceasefire.'' A crisis conference on Lebanon being held in Rome pledged to work urgently for a ''lasting, permanent and sustainable'' ceasefire, but did not demand that the fighting stop now. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan were among the participants.

In Asia, this year's meeting of the so-called ASEAN plus three and the more closely watched ASEAN Regional Forum on Friday have been dominated by the events in Lebanon and Israel as well as the crisis over North Korea's nuclear weapons programmes.

Six-party talks on the programmes have been stalled since November but regional powers had hoped to coax them back to informal discussions on the sidelines of this week's forum.

Fears about North Korea's ambitions were exacerbated when Pyongyang defied international warnings and fired seven missiles into waters east of the Korean peninsula on July 5.

All six parties involved in the North Korea weapons issue will be represented at the ASEAN forum in Malaysia, including Rice and North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sun.

''Conditions are ripe for the resumption of six-party talks,'' Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing told reporters on the fringe of today's two-hour meeting.

Asked if five-party talks were an option if North Korea did not want to take part, Li said: ''All my colleagues in the meeting room now are supportive of the resumption of six-party talks. None of them is supportive of your idea.'' NORTH KOREA MISSILE TESTS South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon said he too was not optimistic about five-party talks after meeting China's Li..

The United States has suggested the talks could take place without Pyongyang and the top US envoy on North Korea said today a refusal by the North to take part should not stop other countries discussing the question.

''We are ready to have a six-party discussion, it's just that the North Koreans don't want to join us, so that's the problem we have,'' Christopher Hill told reporters.

''We have to be talking among ourselves. We have to have some multilateral track here, and we will continue to do that,'' he said after meeting his Russian counterpart.

''I hate to use the words optimism and North Korea in the same sentence,'' he added.

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