Six-way-talks members, except N. Korea, may meet in Seoul: official

Five of the six nations involved in the long-stalled talks to denuclearize North Korea may hold a meeting on the sidelines of an international cyberspace conference to be held in Seoul later this week, a foreign ministry official said Tuesday.

The expected meeting will bring together government officials from South Korea, the United States, China, Russia and Japan, five of the six-party-talks members, except North Korea, on the sidelines of the Seoul Conference on Cyberspace 2013 to be held on Thursday and Friday.

North Korea was not invited to the international conference.

The ministry official said the meeting was organized as part of South Korean President Park Geun-hye's regional peace-promoting policy, dubbed as the Northeast Asia peace initiative.

"The five-nation meeting is on cyberspace security and was arranged as part of efforts to implement the Northeast Asia peace and cooperation initiative," according to the official.

The conference on cyberspace security will bring together high-ranking foreign affairs or information technology officials from the five nations as well as many other countries, including Christopher Painter, the coordinator for Cyber Issues at the U.S. Department of State, and Andrei Krutitskikh, the Russian foreign ministry's special coordinator for information and communications technology.

South Korea's Vice Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul will join the conference.

"No specific issues will be discussed at the (five-nation) gathering; it was only organized to try out a meeting of the key nations involved in the Northeast Asia peace initiative," another government source said.

The six-nation talks, which involve China, Japan, the two Koreas, the U.S. and Russia, have been suspended since the last session in late 2008. (Yonhap News)