Beijing  - Japanese Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone arrived in China on Saturday, one day after Chinese officials protested his comments on a disputed group of islands.

Nakasone was scheduled to meet Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi for talks on bilateral, regional and international issues, Chinese officials said.

Japanese media said Nakasone wanted to "accelerate the build-up of mutually beneficial strategic relations with China" during his two-day visit, his first to China since he took office in September.

Washington - The United States will boycott a UN conference on racism over concerns about a document being prepared for the event that singles out Israel.

US representatives had travelled to Geneva to provide input on the document to replace an earlier controversial draft written in 2001 at a conference in Durban, South Africa. But the US representatives had not been able to overcome objections about Israel being targeted, as well as efforts to restrict freedom of speech by banning "defamation of religion."

"The document being negotiated has gone from bad to worse, and the current text of the draft outcome document is not salvageable," State Department Acting Spokesman Robert Wood said in a statement released late Friday.

Cha-am, Thailand - Efforts to set up a human rights body for the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) got off to a bad start Saturday when Myanmar and Cambodia blocked civil society representatives from attending talks with the group's leaders.

The 14th ASEAN Summit being held in Cha-am, 130 kilometres from Bangkok, has been billed as the most "inclusive" meeting of the 42-year-old South-East Asian grouping to date.

The summit kicked off Saturday morning with a series of talks between ASEAN leaders and representatives of civil society, parliamentarians, youth organizations and the business community.

Brussels - European Union diplomats on Monday urged the next Israeli government not to abandon the two-state solution as the goal of the Middle East peace process, as coalition talks in Israel continued.

"I think we could have a rough start but we need to move ahead with the peace process because the two-state solution road is narrowing and we can't take the luxury to wait," said the Czech Republic's Europe Minister Alexander Vondra ahead of a meeting with EU foreign ministers in Brussels.

The Czech Republic currently holds the EU's rotating presidency.

Bangkok - Thailand Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva will attend the upcoming G-20 summit in London in his capacity as chair of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), foreign ministry officials confirmed Monday.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who was reportedly impressed by the Oxford-educated 44-year-old Thai premier when they met in Davos at the World Economic Forum last month, personally invited Abhisit to attend the G-20 meeting in London on April 2.

Bangkok - Provincial authorities on Tuesday reopened Phra Viharn National Park that has been closed for the past seven months because of a border spat with Cambodia over an ancient Hindu temple adjacent to the area.

"It's an arrangement at the local level," Thai Foreign Ministry spokesman Tharit Charungvat said. "We're letting the local people try it to see how smoothly it goes."

Phra Vihran National Park in Kantharalak district of Si Sa Ket province, 350 kilometres north-east of Bangkok, has been closed to the public since July 14, 2008.