Foreign ministers from Asia and Europe began two days of meetings Monday under the shadow of a North Korean nuclear test and the trial in Myanmar of opposition democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
"The two hottest subjects on the agenda are these two problems," said Czech Foreign Minister Jan Kohout, whose country holds the rotating European Union (EU) presidency.
Both matters were expected to come up for discussion Monday evening when delegates to the ASEM (Asia-Europe) Foreign Ministers' Meeting held a working dinner, Japanese foreign ministry spokesman Kazuo Kodama told reporters.
"We need to condemn North Korea very strongly", said Alexander Stubb, the Finnish foreign affairs minister, calling the nuclear test provocative.
Ministers had just begun a series of bilateral meetings in Hanoi as news of North Korea's latest nuclear test emerged.
Japanese Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone and his South Korean counterpart Yu Myung-Hwan, who met on the conference sidelines, agreed to work closely with the United States and China to forge a response to North Korea's test, Kodama told reporters.
"The foreign minister believes that this nuclear testing certainly will heighten the danger for security in Northeast Asia" and the entire world, he said.
British Junior Foreign Minister Bill Rammell called North Korea's announced nuclear test a "clear breach" of UN Security Council resolutions and urged the country to return to disarmament talks.
Japan's Kodama said there was "an emerging consensus" that the ASEM meeting, which placed the global financial crisis at the top of its agenda, should issue a separate statement on the North Korean issue.
Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bild said the EU had asked for the issue to be mentioned in the ASEM communique while Indonesia's Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda said he understood ASEM would make a pronouncement on North Korea as either part of the general statement or perhaps separately.
On the Myanmar issue, a draft statement seen by AFP calls for Aung San Suu Kyi's release.
"In light of the concern about the recent development to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, ministers… called for the early release of those under detention and the lifting of restriction placed on political parties," said the draft.
She faces up to five years in jail on charges of violating her house arrest after an incident in which an American man swam to her house.
During a meeting Monday with Myanmar Foreign Minister Nyan Win on the sidelines of the ASEM talks, the EU called for Aung San Suu Kyi's immediate release, the Czech foreign minister Kohout said.
In a rare move, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) last week issued an expression of "grave concern" over the treatment of Aung San Suu Kyi.
Myanmar's Southeast Asian neighbours traditionally prefer not to be seen as intervening in the affairs of their members.
Myanmar belongs to both the 10-member ASEAN and ASEM, which also includes the European Union, China, South Korea, Japan, Mongolia, Pakistan and India.
In an opening address to the ASEM meeting, Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung said the world was dealing with not only a global financial crisis, but also climate change, the threat of pandemic disease, terrorism and other challenges.
"In this context we should coordinate our actions to overcome this difficult time," he said.
On Monday night ASEM inaugurated a Japanese-funded initiative, worth about 32 million dollars, to store medicines and protective gear in Asia to fight swine flu and other new strains of influenza.
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