ASSOCIATED PRESS South Korean President Kim Dae-Jung, center, will meet with President George W. Bush and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi today at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Caba San Lucas, Mexico, to discuss North Korea's nuclear program.

APEC provides forum
on N. Korea nukes

Bush, Koizumi, Kim to discuss sanctions
against Kim Jong-Il's government

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By Ryan J. Donmoyer and Yoshiko Matsushita
Bloomberg News

Los Cabos, Mexico >> President George W. Bush will urge the leaders of Japan and South Korea to consider economic sanctions to force North Korea to stop developing nuclear weapons, U.S. officials said.

Bush meets Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and South Korean President Kim Dae Jung at the annual Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Los Cabos today. The three leaders will discuss economic and political strategy for containing North Korea's nuclear ambitions, White House spokesman Sean McCormack said.

That may include talk of withholding food and fuel aid as well as reparations for Japanese rule of the Korean Peninsula in the early 20th century, analysts said.

"If they (North Korea) want to integrate, they're going to have to change their behavior," McCormack said. The meeting between Bush, Koizumi and Kim is "really focused on North Korea."

North Korea said this month it was enriching uranium that could be used in a nuclear bomb. The admission took the West by surprise because communist North Korea had seemed to be emerging from decades of self-imposed exile.

In recent months, it has apologized for kidnapping Japanese citizens in the 1970s, and returned former captives to their homeland. North Korea also expressed regret for a naval skirmish with South Korean in the Yellow Sea in June this year.

The leaders of the three nations will issue a joint statement urging the Stalinist nation to immediately stop nuclear development, Sankei Shimbun newspaper reported, without citing anyone. The leaders also will call for support from other APEC member countries during the two-day meeting, the report said.

Bush has been seeking a peaceful, diplomatic resolution to North Korea's nuclear weapons program even as he courts world support for a United Nations resolution authorizing war on Iraq if it doesn't allow UN inspectors to oversee disarming of its arsenal of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons.

The U.S. thinks it has more leverage to seek a peaceful resolution with North Korea, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has said.

The U.S. president discussed Iraq and North Korea with Chinese President Jiang Zemin during a four-hour meeting at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, on Friday. He said China supports "Iraq's strict compliance" with earlier UN resolutions calling for weapons inspections, and said he and Jiang agreed to develop "a common strategy to convince" North Korean leader "Kim Jong-Il to disarm."