US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
will travel to China, Japan and other Asian countries this month in her first
trip abroad since becoming the nation's top diplomat, dpa reported.
Clinton will stop in Japan, Indonesia, South Korea and China during the February 16-22 trip for talks on bilateral relations, regional issues and the
nuclear disarmament negotiations with North Korea.
Clinton will also discuss the global economic turmoil, humanitarian issues,
security and climate change, State Department deputy spokesman Robert Wood
said.
The new administration of President Barack Obama has been reviewing the policy
on North Korea and the effort to persuade Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear
programme.
Clinton has already endorsed the six-nation format for dealing with North Korea established under former president George W Bush. North Korea agreed to disarm
in 2006 in return for normalization of relations and economic and humanitarian
aid.
But progress has been slow in implementing the deal, with the most recent
glitch focused on a mechanism for verifying North Korea's disclosure about all
of its nuclear activities.
"We all want to see how we can get the North Koreans to abide by their
international obligations and to see how, through the six-party framework, we
can get them to live up to those obligations," Wood said.
The United States removed North Korea from its terrorism blacklist last October
after Pyongyang provided the disclosure.
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