PHNOM PENH, June 18: US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Wednesday shook hands and met briefly North Korea’s top delegate to an Asian security forum here, impressing upon him the need for multilateral talks to end Pyongyang’s alleged nuclear weapons programme, a senior State Department official said.

The official said Mr Powell and the envoy, ambassador at-large Ho Jong, had a short three-minute conversation during which the secretary reiterated the US position on such talks which he had made clear earlier in the ASEAN Regional Forum.

“Briefly, at the end of lunch, they bumped into each other, they shook hands and exchanged a few words,” the official told reporters on condition of anonymity.

“The secretary said basically what he said in the meeting: we want multilateral discussions and that it’s important to proceed in that fashion because the issues are of interest to everybody,” the official said.

The official would not say what the envoy’s response had been, but indicated it was similar to what the North Korean had said in his own presentation to the forum.

In that presentation, Ho, who was sent here in place of Foreign Minister Paek Nam-Sun, said that North Korea required a nuclear deterrent to prevent the United States from launching an attack, the official said.—AFP