US Secretary of State Colin Powell will host the meeting, largely to prepare for the June summit of wealthy, highly industrialized nations that includes Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States.

"I would expect, since many of these governments are concerned about North Korea, that we will discuss North Korea," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters.

He declined to say whether any decisions on the North Korean problem would be incorporated in the chairman's statement at the end of the meeting.

A working group meeting of China, Japan, North Korea, Russia, South Korea and the United States is being held in Beijing in a bid to break a 19-month impasse on how North Korea would meet its security needs in exchange for giving up its unproven and untested nuclear weapons program.

Pyongyang and Washington have both said they will not budge from their tough positions that had led to the deadlock.

Boucher said that Powell would hold a separate meeting with Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi on Friday.

They were "most directly concerned with North Korea to talk about it as well," he said.

Japan has been weighing economic sanctions against Pyongyang following public anger over North Korea's abduction of Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s.

WAR.WIRE