S.Korea, China, Japan to hold meeting of senior diplomats next week

SEOUL - Senior diplomats of South Korea, China and Japan will hold a meeting next week to discuss preparations for the foreign ministers' meeting of the three countries scheduled for late March, Seoul's foreign ministry said Thursday.

South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister for Political Affairs Lee Kyung-soo will meet with his Chinese and Japanese counterparts Liu Zhenmin and Shinsuke Sugiyama in Seoul on March 11, according to the Foreign Ministry.

The first such meeting in about six months would be a preparatory step toward the seventh South Korea-China-Japan meeting of foreign ministers set to be held in late March, the ministry said.

The trilateral meeting of foreign ministers is reportedly expected to be held on March 21 and 22 in Seoul.

The planned meetings would come as South Korean President Park Geun-hye proposed during a regional summit in Myanmar in November to hold a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe following a foreign ministers' meeting.

Park has refused, since her inauguration in February 2013, to sit face-to-face with Abe for his wrong perception of history. Ties between Seoul and Tokyo have strained, since Abe took power, for history and territorial disputes.

The trilateral summit was last held in since May 2012, and the three-way foreign ministers' meeting had not been held since April 2012.