Meeting on the sidelines of a Southeast Asian summit in Singapore, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, new Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun threw their weight behind the six-nation process.

"China, Japan and South Korea agreed to further push forward the six-party talks process to achieve the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula once and for all," the three said in a joint statement following their morning talks.

The statement said the three should "further deepen their coordinated efforts to enhance stability and development in Northeast Asia as well as to secure peace and prosperity in East Asia."

In February, North Korea agreed under a six-party deal with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States to disable its nuclear programmes in exchange for much-needed energy aid and diplomatic benefits.

The North shut down its key Yongbyon reactor in July. Disablement, scheduled for completion by year-end, aims to make it and other facilities unusable for at least a year while talks on total denuclearisation continue.

"The process is only halfway done, and North Korea's missile issue also needs to be addressed," a Japanese foreign ministry official quoted Fukuda as saying.

Tokyo takes a tough line against North Korea, and Fukuda emphasised the importance of resolving a long-standing dispute over the North's kidnapping of Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s, the official said.

Wen and Roh pledged to "coordinate to help improve Japan-North Korea relations," the official added.

Pyongyang is to receive energy aid worth hundreds of millions of dollars in return for disablement and a full declaration of all its nuclear programmes, including a suspected highly enriched uranium project.

If the North goes on next year to dismantle the plants and give up its plutonium stockpile and nuclear weapons, it can expect normalised relations with Washington and a peace pact to formally end the 1950-1953 Korean War.

But Japan has vowed not to provide the North with aid promised under the February deal until Pyongyang provides answers on the kidnappings. North Korea returned five abductees but Japan says more are alive and being kept under wraps.

Earlier, Wen and Roh said they were "satisfied with the progress" made in the six-party talks on North Korea, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters.

Fukuda, fresh from a lightning visit to the United States, came to Singapore hoping to push forward a reconciliation drive with Tokyo's Asian neighbours launched last year by his predecessor, Shinzo Abe.

A Japanese official called his decision to hold his first multilateral talks as premier with China and South Korea "significant".

China and South Korea had repeatedly pushed off meetings with Japan over former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to a war shrine, which stirred up anger over Japan's militarist past, but Abe helped smooth ties.

A three-way meeting in January was their first in two years.

On climate change, the three countries "exchanged their respective positions on the international climate change regime" ahead of a key UN-backed conference on global warming in Bali next month.

They also agreed to promote energy security, cultural exchanges and a variety of cooperation initiatives, according to the joint statement.

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