US Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz is expected to join British Defence Minister Geoffrey Hoon, Australian Defence Minister Robert Hill and their counterparts from Japan, India and Southeast Asia for two days of meetings that formally start on Saturday.

French Minister for Defence Michele Alliot-Marie will attend Saturday's session, but will skip Sunday due to previous engagements, diplomatic sources said.

The second annual Asia Security Conference, organised by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) will be the first major security gathering since the US-led war against Iraq.

Analysts said that maritime security, the territorial dispute between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan and China's emergence as a military power would also be among the topics.

"This is a confidence-building measure for the Asia Pacific because it is the only forum that brings together the defence ministers on a regular basis to discuss matters of mutual interest and security," said Andrew Tan, a security analyst at Singapore's Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies (IDSS).

"These contacts are very important because at this point in time there are a number of issues that need to be discussed.

"Terrorism should be one of them and certainly other issues pertinent to regional security such as the Korean Peninsula."

The programme's official agenda states that nuclear non-proliferation in Northeast Asia will be discussed, as will China's military doctrine and security policy.

Singapore founding father Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew is to address a dinner reception for the group on Friday.

Wolfowitz will chair a session Saturday on US strategy in the Asia-Pacific region, according to the programme agenda, in a move analysts said showed the United States' intent to reinforce alliances.

"After Iraq, the US is realistic that it must build bridges, that it cannot act unilaterally. It has to have friends and allies in order to help it in the war against terrorism," Tan told AFP.

Britain's Hoon will head a session on Europe's role in Asian security.

The defence ministers of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore will lead talks on managing the terrorist threat in Southeast Asia, which has become a focus of the global anti-terrorism drive after the defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

A regional associate of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror network, the Islamic extremist group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), operates in Southeast Asia.

JI is blamed for last October's bomb attacks in the Indonesian resort island of Bali which killed 202 people from 21 countries.

Security analyst Tan said the recent bomb attacks in Riyadh and Morocco "demonstrates that al-Qaeda is still very active and is still a threat to all of us."

Amitav Acharya, deputy director at the IDSS, said this weekend's meeting would complement other Asian diplomatic gatherings brought together through, among others, the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum.

"This is a useful complement to the various other multilateral bodies and forums that already exist in Asia," Acharya said.

"But this is not a substitute for them and should not be seen as such," he said, noting that defence ministers do not make foreign and defence policies independent of presidents and prime ministers.

The conference is "useful for bilateral exchanges on the margins and sometimes it can lead to discussions to resolve differences. It can come up with ideas for defence cooperation," he said.

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