Seoul, The defence ministers of South Korea, the United States and Japan are expected to hold a trilateral meeting in Seoul later this week, sources said Wednesday, amid efforts to strengthen their security cooperation.
Consultations have been underway to arrange the tripartite talks in time for U.S. Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin’s visit to South Korea for the annual bilateral defence ministerial talks with his new South Korean counterpart, Shin Won-sik, slated for Monday, Yonhap News agency reported.
Japanese Defence Minister Minoru Kihara, who took office in September, is expected to join the session, which would mark the first stand-alone defence ministerial meeting of the three nations.
The proposed meeting is expected to flesh out details of a real-time missile data sharing system.
At the Camp David summit in August, leaders of the three nations agreed to operationalize the information sharing system by the end of this year.
Among the topics likely to be discussed at the talks are the trilateral exercises, as the U.S. and its Asian allies have been staging joint drills to enhance their coordinated capabilities.
Last month, the three nations jointly conducted their first aerial drills and a maritime interdiction exercise near the Korean Peninsula, the first of such in seven years.
Source: Bahrain News Agency